by Jeffrey Lent
“Oh, I’m not,” he said. “I figure it’ll be my best hope if it turns out you’re right about God and I’m not.”
“Hewitt.”
He said, “So Meredith obviously doesn’t know about her grandfather either. The whole story, I mean.”
“No. One fine day it’ll be me that tells her. But no time soon. She’s a fine girl, considering everything, a very fine girl. But not ready for that yet. Now that’s a bit of a fib. She would find it fascinating. But, things being what they are, for the next year or two at least, she’ll have enough on her plate.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means children will never leave an old woman in peace. It means that as soon as Meredith is settled into college, Beth intends to divorce Evan.”
“Aw, no.”
“I’m afraid so.”
Hewitt said, “Do either of them …”
“No. It’s all Beth. Beth trying once more to get control over every bit of her life.”
“You’ve talked to her? Damn it Mother, she’s not that stupid. You can’t spend twenty years of your life with someone and then try to erase it and begin again.”
Mary Margaret was calm. “I had my little say. To no avail of course. But it’s part of why I came along on this trip. It’s going to be hard on the girl, harder than her mother can imagine. But at least if Meredith is up here in a different land with different people doing different things, I can hope she takes to it enough so it eases some of the pain and shock. Because that’s what it will be.”
Hewitt said, “And then there’s Uncle Hewitt close by.”
“No. There is no such assumption. That part is up to you.”
“Of course. But Mother I’m already wild about that girl. After just a few hours. You think I’d turn my back if I even suspect there’s need there?”
“Don’t be histrionic. She may choose to see you once or twice a year. Perhaps the worst imposition would be to want to spend Christmas with you instead of going home where there is no home anymore. Just calm down.”
“I’m fine.”
“They’re off to Middlebury tomorrow. They can do without me for much of a day. So, this girl Jessica?”
He ignored this. He said, “You’re going to stay here tomorrow while Beth takes Meredith to Middlebury?”
She said, “I was asking about this girl living with you, Hewitt.”
“I know. But she’s not what you’re hoping. For Christ sake, Mother, she’s near young enough to be my daughter.”
“And so? There were ten years between your father and myself and it never made a bit of difference.”
Hewitt paused. Then he said, “I’ll tell you what Mother. Let’s not talk about Jessica tonight. Let’s leave that for tomorrow when it’s just the three of us and the others are over to Middlebury for the day.”
Mary Margaret screwed her face with interest. “Why?”
“Because it’s not a subject for tonight.”
She heard some edge in his voice and he could see she was about to press, the privilege of a mother. So he said, “I’ve been in touch with Emily.”
Oh she was good. Her eyes widened all the way out and then her lids slammed down so she was peering between slits and her whole face was disapproval of the woman who, right or wrong, had harmed her son for so many years. She might well know much or most of this harm Hewitt had generated himself through his churning engine of passion but that made no difference to his mother. It was the girl, the woman responsible. For if her son loved her, and she rejected him, what sort of woman could she be? He was put in mind of the mothers of death row men—love unconditional. Her hackles were up. And he loved her very much.
Dryly she said, “And how is she?
Hewitt told her, more or less. He left out the part about his trip to Bluffport, saying only that he’d made a condolence call and that they’d spoken a couple times since, all of which, ground down to the finest of lenses, was technically true.
A woman whose life was transformed not once but twice by tragedy, she was not inured to it but empathetic and regardless of how she might view the woman who stood like a figure at some far station well down the line, at the back of her son’s near madness and prolonged grief, when he told of the death of that woman’s husband she closed her eyes and her lips moved silently and briefly.
When he finished she sat a time silent. Then she said, “I’ll not share my thoughts because my advice is unwanted and would be unheeded.”
“I know your thoughts Mother.”
“Perhaps you do and perhaps you don’t.”
“Leave her be. That’s what you think.”
“It’s not that simple, Hewitt. You see, I know you also. Now, every adult child thinks they know themselves better than their parents do. It’s the nature of things. What I’m saying is I can see you from the outside, something hard for a person to do for themselves. You have an entrenched life. She may feel hers is less so just now but she’s not someone who just fell into you, now, the way you are. And there are the children. If they were younger, maybe. But teenagers. They would drive you insane. And mean to do it and there would be nothing you or she could do to stop that.”
He was silent. She waited, watching him and then sighed. Finally she said, “So what do you intend to do?”
“For the moment, nothing. She needs time. I have that. I’ve got work to do. And Mother, I’m well aware the odds against her coming to me.”
“But if she did …”
“I’d open the door.”
MEREDITH, JESSICA AND Hewitt ate eggs and bacon and toast. Mary Margaret and Beth had yogurt with fruit. Then out into the yard to see mother and daughter off. Meredith was in a simple pale blue and white dress and sturdy sport sandals. Beth in dark slacks and pink blouse under a charcoal sweater, her hair with barrettes so slight wings were over her ears. At the last minute Meredith turned to Mary Margaret. “Gram? Are you sure you don’t want to come? This is the one I’m most interested in, so far.”
Mary Margaret said, “No, honey. I want to spend the day with Hewitt. And you’ll be fine.”
“Oh, I will. It’s just you see things Mom and I seem to miss.”
“Well, Merry. Why don’t you try to see what you think I would be noticing?”
Meredith shook her head. “I can’t,” she said. “I’ll never see what you do.” And stepped down into the already running car, her mother at the wheel and they went out of the yard.
Mary Margaret said, “Of course you will girl. You just need to live long enough.”
JESSICA STOOD AT the stove, pulling the coffee toward the front to warm again. The fire was dying but the stovetop gave off strong heat. Mary Margaret saw what she was doing and said, “Good. I can’t give up my coffee even if they say I should. I still need my three cups.”
Jessica said, “This’ll be just a moment.”
Mary Margaret nodded and said, “That’s fine. My bladder’s bursting. Those two held the bathroom hostage, without a thought to an old lady.”
Hewitt said, “Go on and freshen up, Mother. There’s no hurry to start the day.”
Jessica and Hewitt stood looking at each other, both listening to her tread up the stairs, a slow one foot at a time climb.
Hewitt said, “So, are you ready?”
A pause. “Hewitt, I’m not sure I see the point. What’s to be gained by telling your mother that the niece of her husband’s first wife is staying here with you? How can that possibly be a thing she’d be better off knowing? If I was her all it would do was make me wonder what it was I might be after. I don’t want her mistrusting me, Hewitt.”
He peered at her. “You holding up all right?”
“Okay. I’m a little jittery.”
Hewitt poured coffee into his mug and hers. “For me it’s simple. Mother needs to be told. For many reasons but mostly because if you and I continue to get along and you hang around here she’s going to push to learn the truth. I told her, in a vague sort of way that I’
m back in touch with Emily. But she’s got radar like the government and she’s already working on theories about what’s going on.”
“What are you talking about? What’s going on?” Mary Margaret was back in the doorway, looking from one to the other.
Hewitt said, “Jesus Mother. Don’t you flush?”
“I certainly do.” She crossed the room and poured coffee, added milk from a carton in the fridge. “And haven’t you heard about conserving water? Speaking of which you need to change the gaskets in the faucets of the tub and sink upstairs. At Broad Oaks they sent around a pamphlet about the unnecessary use of water. And not just because of the drought but because there’s long-term stress on aquifers all over the U.S. and people still want green lawns in August. And the sprayers stay on all night at the golf courses. People are such damn fools. And you didn’t answer my question. What’s going on?”
Hewitt fooled with the front of his shirt, checking the buttons. Jessica turned and took the last strip of bacon and ate it. Hewitt said, “Why don’t we all go sit down?”
Mary Margaret shot her eyes back and forth between them and then said to Jessica, “Don’t you work? Don’t you need to”—she worked one tiny brown spotted fist in a circle—“get ready to go to work? I can talk to my son here. He can tell me whatever is the big secret suddenly kept from me. Or is your whole story a lie?”
Jessica looked at the old woman and said, “I work but not fulltime. And my story isn’t a bit of lie. You just haven’t heard it yet.”
“Okeydoke,” Hewitt said. “Let’s all settle down. It’s no conspiracy against you, Mother. Goddamn it I don’t need prickly women right now.”
“Prickly? I’m not prickly. Maybe I said people are damn fools but I was not including myself.”
Jessica said, “Hewitt, maybe I should take a walk and let you and your mother talk.”
“I don’t think so, girlie,” said Mary Margaret. “Whatever nonsense you’re up to here I want to be able to watch your face when it comes out.”
Jessica halted, a distinct sensation since she was standing still. She said, “Yes. I do believe you’re right. And, to tell the truth, I want to watch you as well.”
“Ah there now. The bee can sting, can she?”
Hewitt set his mug down on the chrome bar along the front of the range with enough force so the handle parted and was still clenched in his hand. “Calm down. The both of you. Let’s get this done with.” He tossed the broken handle into the sink where it clattered in the sudden silence of the room.
In the living room he commanded both to sit and they did, not touching but side by side on the couch. He wouldn’t look at Jessica, not wanting to know if her face was calm or panic rising. He went to the mantel and took down the manila envelope and removed first the photograph of the painting and silently handed it to his mother.
She held it a moment, squinting, and then reached under her sweater and drew out glasses and put them on and studied the photograph. Then placed it on her lap and looking only at Hewitt said, “I’ve never seen this before. But I’ve seen one somewhat like it.”
“The one you’re thinking of Dad gave Grandmother when he visited up here around 1946. When the both of you moved into the house he crated it and left it in the basement. I found it a while ago. It’s hanging in the red room and you must’ve seen it when you were up two years ago.”
She tilted her head to one side, scrutinizing him.
He drew out the other photograph and handed it over.
His mother took her time with this, a deep concentrated study. Only once did she glance up and that time briefly at Jessica beside her and then back to the photo. Her hands held it from below as if it were both precious and alien. Finally she turned it over to see if there was writing across the back or a studio’s mark. Or just to see the reverse side. Then she carefully did not offer the photograph to Hewitt but placed it on the couch faceup between herself and Jessica. She sat looking off a time at the wall to one side of where her son sat. The three shelves of vinyl recordings and above that the shelf running the length of the wall that held the old clock and a variety of found items from around the farm, as well as things her husband had collected here and there as he traveled and other things that were gifts. A shelf of curiosities, each with its own personal whisper of history and each also with a power and luminosity Thomas Pearce had either recognized and drawn forth or imposed upon them. Her eyes ran along that shelf and then up toward the bare wall with a single painting, not her husband’s work but some ancient Pearce patriarch who had always held that place on the wall. Finally she flicked her eyes across Hewitt and back briefly down to the photograph and then up to Jessica. Who sat with her hands loose in her lap and her face turned, waiting.
Mary Margaret straightened her back so she was upright, gathered on the couch. She said, “Everything was destroyed in that fire. I never until this moment saw an image of her. But the resemblance is clear. Who are you?”
This said with all the bravery the world can bestow upon an old woman, which is a great deal. Nevertheless Hewitt heard the tremble in his mother and wanted to protect her. From the bristling tragedy that had found and bound his parents? It was too late for that, too late by at least a decade before he was even born. And so sat silent, leaned forward in an old ladderback rocker.
Jessica lifted both hands and worked fingertips in circles in the muscles below her cheekbones, above her jaw. Then dropped her hands into her lap and said, “My mother was Celeste Willoughby Pearce’s younger sister, Candace. Candace Willoughby Kress. I always knew about my aunt. My grandmother told me stories. When I was a little girl they found me more than once up at the cemetery before those stones, the ones for her and that little girl—”
“The hell.” Mary Margaret stood. “What do you want? Why are you here? There’s no money you know. He’s been dead twenty-three years and there’s nothing left but this crumbling farm and a little cash to help the Social Security see me through until I croak, and if there’s a dribble left it goes—”
Hewitt was at an even tempo with the rocker, one leg crossed over the other knee and without pause he said, “Mother.”
She stopped. Arrested. She looked about the room, not at the two people sharing it with her but at the room itself, the pine sideboard, the empty stuffed chairs, the cobwebs in the upper corners, the threadbare hooked rug, the great cold fireplace. Searching for something, near bewildered as if what she sought might be some younger self. Or another soul altogether. Someone to advise how best to proceed.
“I knew almost nothing of your aunt, their little girl. Has Hewitt told you how we met? Thomas Pearce and myself?”
The room was quiet except for the slow crunch of Hewitt’s rocker moving back and forth from the edge of the rug on to the floorboards.
Softly Jessica said, “Yes.” Mary Margaret looked now deeply at the girl, tilting her head to take her in. As if she were finally equipped for true appraisal.
Mary Margaret said, “By the time he came to me he’d buried all that as far inside as he could. It was a worry, a great fret to me for a time, wondering how he divided himself between past and present. Don’t get me wrong. Plenty of times I would catch him with his eyes clouded to another world, another place altogether. I was brave enough to never doubt he’d return from those times to what was right before him. And he always did. Even on his truly bad days I knew it was all part of how he had to work, the stations of his mind.”
She stopped and then looked at Hewitt. Who had stopped rocking but settled with his knee still crossed over the other. Serious and tender, he said, “Go on, Mother.”
She concentrated on him, then looked sternly at Jessica. “I think,” she said, “I’ve said enough for the moment. You must understand although I know enough to know most things are never truly finished, I did believe my husband’s past was one of those small pockets that get lost forever. And I give nothing away, do I now, by saying I was frightened of unknown revelations those first years b
ut slowly came to believe it truly was all gone, all but the torment of memory in his head. Only to learn this morning nothing’s ever trusted to be done with. The past rears its head when we least expect it. Maybe when we least want it. Although there, you see, I can lie as easy as the next; there is no good time for the past to break down doors. And look at this. Sweet Mother of Mercy, you’re just a girl yourself. Yet here you are. So you located Hewitt. It’s easy enough to do these days. But why come? What did you think to find? What are you after, truly now?”
Jessica looked down at her hands. With her head tilted her hair fell raggedly forward, enough to obscure her face from the woman seated next to her, but not from Hewitt who watched intently and saw the familiar shades slide over her face and thought he knew what was coming but made no effort to intervene, guessing it would make it worse, at best not wanting to push things further with any wrong thing he might say.
Jessica stood, her hands still joined, now wringing each other before her. She looked at Hewitt’s mother and said, “Mrs. Pearce.” And then shot her eyes to Hewitt as if drowning. “I’m so sorry. But I can’t do this right now. I have to go. Oh shit, Hewitt, I’m sorry but I have to go right now I—”
He was up out of the chair and took her elbow and walked from the room, casting one glance back at his mother and went with Jessica into the kitchen and out on to the porch. Once there she paused and looked at him, her eyes splintered wide upon him.
He said, “You’re okay. You’re okay, honey. You just do what you need. You want to walk up into the woods or what?”
“No. I’m going to drive. I’ll just drive around. I don’t know. Maybe I’ll call later. Or just disappear for a while. A couple days. How long are they going to be here? I don’t think I can handle this. I’ve got to get out of here and I don’t know if I can come back because I know you have to walk in there and tell your mother what a fuck-up mess I am. So I don’t—”
He put his fingers gently on her mouth, stroking down over her lips. He said, “Jessica?”
She looked but did not speak.