by Joan Barfoot
Obviously he did not understand the rules of space, and people’s own tight ways of dealing with it, the stone fences and the small farms methods of containment.
But she didn’t know how to explain that sort of thing. “Yes, I see,” she said, but she didn’t. She thought she must be, after all, only an ignorant farm girl, unable to understand the menace in what he saw, or tell him what she saw. She might know how to make a perfect pastry, and feed a dozen hungry men at threshing time, but she would never be able to properly express what a poet meant to say.
She was flattered by his attention, but terrified he would discern the scope of her ignorance.
What did he see? It was possible he only viewed her as a pupil, a pretty dark-haired girl who would bend obligingly over his lessons, until it was time for him to leave.
Around the house, she was a little absent-minded. “Mooning about the teacher,” her brothers laughed.
“You shush,” said her mother. “Leave your sister alone. It wouldn’t do you two any harm to pay more attention to what Mr. Hendricks has to say. It’s a chance to learn, having a teacher in the house. He won’t be here forever, you know.”
“Boy, that’s good,” said her smallest brother.
“Do you like him, then?” her mother asked later. She meant a good deal more, including, “Do you like him enough?” and “Does he like you, and is anything going to come of this?”
“Yes, I think so, he’s very nice,” Aggie told her, meaning that she liked him enough and had some hopes.
The cows were released into the fields. Aggie’s father and the boys were mucking out the stalls, and the spring air in the evenings was cool and sharp. It smelled to Aggie of greenness and freshness, nicely spiced by manure.
But after a while the teacher would say, “Let’s go back in,” and at the door he would scrape and scrape the boots he’d borrowed from her father. Sometimes he seemed to be holding his breath. She thought, “Well, it might not smell so good to somebody who isn’t used to it.”
(Frances, intrigued by differing versions, used to ask about him. “He was a good man,” June would tell her. “A gentleman, a saint.”
(“Listen,” Aggie said, leaning forward, “you want to know what kind of man he was? Listen — what your grandfather was, really, was a man who couldn’t stand to have shit on his boots.”)
It was May when he mentioned marriage. The day before, he’d gotten a letter from a town sixty miles away. Mail for him, for anyone for that matter, was rare.
He closed the books, ending their lesson at the kitchen table, and said, “I’ve been offered another job next year. In a town school. I’d just be teaching two grades, and they’d be paying me more.”
What did he expect her to say? “That’s wonderful. You must be pleased. Are you going to take it?”
“I think so. It seems a good move.” He stacked the books and picked uncomfortably at the yellow oilcloth tacked to the table. “I’ve been thinking, I’m twenty-eight now, and this position will be secure. It’s a nice town, well-kept and prosperous. I think you’d like it.”
“Would I?” Imagine how hard, being the man and having to be the first to speak. So risky, leaving yourself open like that.
“So I wondered how you would feel about getting married this summer. I could go on ahead and get us a house, and we’d be there for the beginning of school. I’d like to settle, you see. Have a family. Could you think about it? It’ll be quite a different sort of life, but you might like it.”
He didn’t mention love or desire, so neither did she. She ought to have asked why he was asking, though. She failed to see past her own picture, which was what she loved: the two of them, warm and companionable in the kitchen, teaching and learning, with unseen children sleeping upstairs.
She measured his mouth and his slender body. There were magical parts to marriage. He was right that it would be a different sort of life. Who knew what was out there, in other places? Potential delights were being laid out like candies at Christmas, so of course she said, “Oh, but I’d like to marry you, very much, thank you.”
“Good then, I’m glad.” Then he didn’t quite know what to do and stood, gathering up the books, and said only, “Well then, I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll miss you, Aggie,” her mother said. “You’ll be a long way off. But I’m pleased for you, really.”
Aggie herself could not yet feel the distance.
Now when they went for walks they touched lips chastely at the door before going back inside. They held hands, too, although lightly, a connection of fingers, not palms. At night in her bed, she imagined him beside her, and wished for a little impropriety.
He continued his instruction with the poems at the kitchen table, but also with other information elsewhere.
“It’s not a big town,” he told her, “but it’s prosperous, and the school is good. For one thing, children aren’t expected to drop out to help at home, or at least most of them don’t. It will be quite different from living here, and you’ll be a long way from your family. I hope you won’t be unhappy,” and he looked at her anxiously.
“Then there’s being a teacher’s wife, you may find that an adjustment. There are certain standards for a teacher, he has a position to maintain, and his wife is the same, she has a certain position as well.”
Was he worried? Did he think she would embarrass him?
“No, no, not at all. It’s just that you’re young, and there are expectations you’re not used to. Things like entertaining parents of my pupils and other people with some position. It will be a different class of people, that’s all I meant.”
All? She had a flash of resentment, on behalf of her parents, her sisters and brothers, the people of the area, who were not, apparently, quite good enough. Also, he sounded like a teacher, not a — what? Fiancé? It was hard to find the word for him. Anyway, he was using that deeper, more assured tone of his poem-teaching.
But it was quite true that, without instruction, she might well fail to measure up. And it was also true that the big, ruddy members of her family would not fit comfortably in a banker’s parlor, there was no getting around that.
“But don’t worry,” he assured her, “you’ll do fine, I know.”
He made the future sound like a foreign country. She would not be popping back and forth like Sylvia, just down the road.
He went away to find a house for them, and while he was gone the neighbors held showers and she came away with hand-embroidered pillowcases and towels with monograms. Her new initials would be AH, which looked like either an expression of delight or a sigh, stitched out like that.
“You’ll be so far away,” said Edith, as they lay whispering in their beds.
Aggie imagined lying in bed whispering to her husband.
Her mother came to her, sat uncomfortably on the edge of the bed. “I’m sure you know, Aggie, that there are things that will happen when you’re married? That married people do?”
Well, everyone knew certain things, just from seeing the cows with the bull, and the cats in the barn with their litters of kittens. Obviously something more would be involved with people, since they were not mere animals, and her own body hinted at longings, if not at how they might be resolved.
“What you have to remember,” her mother explained, “is that men are made differently. They get their pleasure with their wives, and a woman’s pleasure is in her children. So you have to be patient and wait. Do you see? Whatever happens, you’ll find joy in your children.”
The way she put it, it seemed like a somewhat lopsided bargain. Also, Aggie was never very good at waiting, although she supposed that might be something that would come with maturity and marriage. Anyway, her mother was so clearly embarrassed that there was no way of inquiring further. There was some kind of conspiracy of silence on the matter. It might be, though, that, once marrie
d, Aggie and her teacher would find a communion of silence, instead.
There were going to be so many things to find out, she could hardly wait. On the other hand, she wanted the wedding day itself to go very slowly. She wanted attention paid to her mysterious, exotic future far away. She wanted a day of being proud, and having everybody look. Beyond that, circumstances could hardly be foreseen.
Her family and their neighbors filled up the little church. Neil looked strained and solemn and his voice quavered over the vows. Her own voice she could barely hear.
The women took cakes and special sandwiches, with the crusts cut off for the occasion, to the church basement for the reception. It was true that everyone paid attention. She hung on his arm and was proud. He spoke so seriously and properly. He made everyone else, even the women, look a little rough and shabby. Oh, they might make fun of a slender young man who spoke oddly and did not do a man’s work, but they were also impressed by the unknown; and now she was part of his unknown.
She found herself a little distant with her family, although benign. They drove home from the church to get changed for the journey. It was hard to understand this really was a farewell. “I’ll be back,” she said, “and you must come and visit.”
They weren’t teasing today. They were a bit stiff, too, as if she were a different person now, unfamiliar, someone’s wife and no longer their daughter or sister.
The back of the buggy was filled with her trunk and their wedding gifts. “Goodbye, then, girl,” said her father, lifting her up beside the waiting teacher, who was something of a cipher in all this. In a moment of panic, she almost leaped down, an impulse to run away. But she knew what it was. “Bride’s jitters,” her mother had predicted, and so she took herself in hand.
She turned in her seat to look back. There was the familiar green and gold of the land; the short, plump, brown-and-grey-haired mother, in her best dress today; her stiff, bulky father; her brothers, both uncomfortable in their Sunday suits; Sylvia and her husband; and little Edith: all waving, as she waved back.
They vanished at the bend in the lane, Edith leaping up and down as if she were trying to keep them in view a little longer. And that was that.
And this was it. She smiled at him, and he smiled back.
Facing ahead, it began to seem real. The muscles of the trotting horse rippled like those on the sort of man she had once assumed she would marry. But now she and the teacher were going somewhere. There was a new, unknowable life down the road. Home and the people there were far behind.
And oh, she must be a foolish old woman, to find herself missing them now. All the noises, of people laughing and talking, and the sounds of crickets and cattle; the smells, of cooking vegetables and steaming cowshit, skunk reek in the dusk and hot pie shells and boiling dates, all the heat contained in that old house.
Also, it is no doubt ridiculous, but sometimes she longs for her mother. She would like to be rocked in her mother’s lap, her head on her mother’s shoulder, her knees drawn up, being comforted.
But she is not small, and cannot curl up on anyone’s lap, for comfort or anything else. Her mother is dead, and she herself is old, and her own daughter has never shown a sign of desiring an embrace.
SIX
June’s dream of heaven is of rising, weightless, through clouds to a golden place. Angels, just the way they look in pictures, with their white robes and golden haloes and luxuriant feathered wings, will drift toward her. She will see, beyond them, her father glancing up. Slightly surprised, he will smile, the way he used to coming through the door at nights, and then step lightly toward her. He will take hold of her hands and because he is strong, or because she is weightless, he will swing her off her feet, around and around, hair and legs flying, hands gripped firmly in his so that she can’t fall and hurt herself. They will both be laughing and dizzy. When he sets her down, he will say, “So, bunny, what have you been doing?”
Well, that’s a child’s sort of fancy, and she is no child. Heaven will not, of course, be so undignified. But still.
She will rise weightless through clouds to a golden place. Angels will greet her, and beyond them she will see her father looking up. He will step lightly toward her, take her hands and smile, gently and sadly, the way he did when he talked about his mother so far away. He will put his arm around her shoulder and they will walk together.
That vision lacks the joy, the leaping-up sort of feeling of the first one. On the other hand, it is more serene, and powerful enough to last eternity.
First, however, there is getting through all this to there, a matter not only of time, but of effort and faith. There are preparations to be made, a state of mind to enter. It’s hard to get into the right frame of mind around Aggie, who loves food and no doubt Frances, greedy for both, but is otherwise never pleased or satisfied.
And who has done the right thing here? Who has been here? Who else would clean Aggie and get her meals and help her in and out of bed, and get up in the middle of the night for her? Who else, under these conditions, would touch her stained and nasty sheets?
Still, the point is to do the right thing. Not to love, or for that matter be loved.
It’s like the bright young teachers talking about the fulfilment of their pupils, or their happiness. Just what, June would like to know, do fulfilment and happiness have to do with anything? Children are there to learn, not to be happy.
But if she is here to do the right thing, what is that? It is not necessarily mere selfishness, this wish to shift her mother. Aggie truly isn’t safe, left on her own all day. Not really safe, the way she would be with professionals, people who knew what they were doing, how to handle her weight and keep an eye on her movements. If she fell down, or had some kind of attack, they would be there on the spot to lift and help her, to diagnose and fix her injuries. While in June’s hands she might die waiting. Safety is something. You can give up a few things to be secure. Surely at Aggie’s age that’s not a bad bargain.
Then, too, Aggie has too much time on her hands. It’s not healthy, having nothing to do all day but read and think and sometimes bake. There is about her occasionally a distressing sort of vagueness that suggests she could do with new interests.
In the place June is thinking of, there would be crafts and visitors and other old people, things going on, although it is admittedly difficult to picture Aggie bent over a heap of small tiles, making ceramic ashtrays for Christmas gifts, or crocheting bedspreads, and it is hard to imagine her willingly listening to visiting schoolchildren singing hymns or Christmas carols. She might argue with a roommate, and June might get calls from staff complaining of her language.
Aggie’s the one who talks of the excitement of change, who preaches new experiences. She ought to leap at this.
June’s heart leaps as she arrives home, late because she stopped to buy a plastic sheet (embarrassing to catch the sales clerk’s curious glance). George’s car is outside, and, stepping somewhat breathlessly through the door, she hears voices in the front room: his and Aggie’s. How long has he been here? How much has she missed?
He stands. “June, hello, I was just waiting until you got home.” He is lanky and tall, and his hands, when they’re not working, always look a little incoherent, confused by lack of purpose. Now he moves one as if to shake her hand and then withdraws it, as if that would be too formal.
“Sit down, June,” Aggie suggests. “Have a cup of tea with us. I made cookies, too.” That must be her idea of a challenge: proving competence with food. “We were just talking about who’s going to run for mayor this year. I was telling George your father once thought of running for council.”
“I know. You told me.” June is unhappy to hear that she sounds abrupt, almost curt. In a campaign for the doctor’s vote, Aggie is offering cookies, and June clipped words.
“Apparently he almost did,” Aggie tells him.
“He didn’t discuss it with me, of course, but I heard. Likely he’d have won, too, but for some reason he decided against it. I suppose he didn’t like to take the chance of losing, he hated to lose, and then I don’t imagine I’d have been the ideal candidate’s wife.”
“But tell me,” June interrupts, addressing either or both of them, “have you figured out what’s wrong?”
Aggie looks amused by the bluntness, George distressed. He smiles uncomfortably. “Not yet. And you mustn’t tell anyone I’ve made a house call; I’d get drummed out of the medical profession.
“But seriously, we’ve gotten quite a few things done today — blood pressure, an internal, and I’ve got some blood samples. Which reminds me I can’t stay much longer, I’ll have to get them to the lab. Now, if things get worse, or if these tests show any abnormalities, we’ll maybe have to check you into hospital for a day or so, Aggie, for X-rays and EEGs and so forth. Nothing strenuous, but I’d like to do as much as we can outside of hospital. Aggie tells me” — he smiles at June — “she’d prefer not to break her record of never being in a hospital except to visit somebody. And I’d prefer to avoid putting that sort of stress on her anyway. But we’ll have to see how things go.”
This, June thinks, is much too vague and unsatisfactory, hardly a step in any direction, much less the right one.
“But as far as you can tell,” Aggie interjects, “I don’t have some awful disease.” She grins. “I’m like June, you know — I’d like to get it cleared up, although for different reasons. Mine are quite immediate. You can’t imagine how rank it is, waking up in a cold, wet bed.”
Well, you have to admire her, she doesn’t back off. She runs right at a problem, even a shameful one. It’s like a teenager with acne going around pointing at his pimples and saying, “Look at that, boy, isn’t that something awful? I can’t wait till I grow out of it.”
“But what can we do in the meantime, if it keeps on happening?” June doesn’t want it forgotten, what the issue is here. “We can’t just keep on this way.”