“I thought you were Dad. What are you doing here?”
“Giving you a chance to talk.”
There was a plain deal desk, homemade, painted white, against one wall. Rachel pulled out the pine chair in front of it and turned it around, facing the bed. Her blisters were throbbing; she needed to sit.
“If I wanted to talk to you, I’d do it at school. Does Dad know you’re here?”
“Yes. Were you in the Fremantle house this afternoon, Lara? What particular version of your reasons for being there should I tell your dad?”
“I wasn’t there. I’ve been here since I got home from school.”
“Blitz Fosse says you were out until about an hour ago.”
“So you and Blitz are a gossip team now? Call Myra Schapen and get her to put it on her website.”
Only years of dealing with surly adolescents kept Rachel from giving in to the anger Lara wanted to rouse in her. “Whoever was in the Fremantle house ran through your cornfield. Blitz didn’t see anyone but you go past.”
“Yeah, he thinks someone died and named him God, but he doesn’t know or see everything. Lots of people live out our way. Being as how the corn is higher even than his all-seeing eye, I doubt he’d know if the whole track team was running through it.”
Rachel changed the subject since she clearly had taken the wrong tack with the Fremantle house. “Lara, you’re a smart girl and a good student. If you fail your courses, that will affect the whole course of your life: where you go to college—whether you can even go to college—what kinds of careers are open to you, everything. Perhaps you’re trying to punish your mother for abandoning you right now when you need her most, but is the satisfaction you get from punishing your mom worth the harm you’re doing yourself? I haven’t talked to Susan; I will before I leave. If she is so depressed that she’s not getting out of bed or eating, you could damage your own life without getting any response from her. Not because she doesn’t love you, but because she doesn’t have the strength to help you. Lara is the one person who can help Lara right now.”
“This isn’t Sunday school. You don’t have to preach a sermon.”
“You’ve been in my Sunday school class for sixteen months,” Rachel said, “and my English class for a month. How many sermons have you heard me preach?”
Lara turned her head away, angry at being cornered, unable to come up with an answer.
“The hardest thing about adolescence is that everything seems too big. There’s no way to get context or perspective,” Rachel said. “Pain and joy without limits. No one can live like that forever, so experience finally comes to our rescue. We come to know what we can endure, and also that nothing endures.”
She was speaking to herself more than to Lara. After twelve years in a classroom, she knew the intensity of adolescence, and knew no cure for it except growing up. And then one has age and experience, and mourns the loss of intensity. Maybe it’s why musicians and mathematicians are said to peak young—poetry needs the fire of an unbounded universe.
“My so-called mother is an adolescent, then,” Lara said sulkily. “She seems able to experience pain without limits.”
Rachel didn’t want to get sucked into that discussion. “When did she last eat?”
“She’s not a baby, and I’m not her nurse. It’s not my job to make her eat.”
Rachel blinked at the savagery in Lara’s voice. “I don’t think it is, but I bet you keep an eye on what she does. When did she last eat?”
“She gets up when no one’s in the house,” Lara finally said. “Sometimes I find an empty carton, or she’s eaten cold soup out of a can.”
“Sounds appetizing. What about you—when did you last eat a real meal?”
“You want to move in and cook, and sleep with Dad?”
“I want to smack your smart little mouth, and I would if that would have the magic effect of turning you back to the person you were six months ago. As your teacher, in Sunday school and sophomore English, as a friend of your family, I want to help you if you will let yourself be helped.” Rachel kept her voice calm, but she wondered if she had some longing for Jim that showed in her words or in her tone.
Lara reddened at Rachel’s remark and even mumbled something like an apology, which reassured Rachel: if the girl still had some vestiges of courtesy in her, she wasn’t out of reach yet. “I eat. Dad gives me grocery money. I buy stuff on my way home. That’s how I know Mom’s eating when I’m away because Dad doesn’t like yogurt.”
“Do you have a grandmother or aunt nearby, someone you could stay with for a bit? It must be hard to live here right now.”
“Dad’s folks died when he was nine. My mom’s mother thinks Mom is pretending to be sick to make herself the center of attention. She and my grandfather live in Salt Lake City. Whenever they come to visit, all they do is criticize Dad for being a loser and tell Mom she’s going to get skin cancer from being out in the sun.”
“They sound wonderful,” Rachel said. “Let’s find someone in your life you could talk to. What about Pastor Natalie at church? Or Mr. Gartner at school?”
“I’m not sick. I don’t need a therapist, if that’s what you’re suggesting. My brother died, in case you hadn’t noticed. I have a right to be upset!”
“Yes, he did. Would it make Chip happy to know you were doing your best to fail your classes in his memory?”
“That’s not fair!”
“Blitz told me how proud Chip was of your brains. He used to brag about you and your special accomplishments. The best way to honor him is to continue to be the person he was so proud of, don’t you think?”
Lara didn’t say anything, just pulled the comforter up around her head and rocked herself. Teachers must not touch students, Rachel reminded herself, putting aside the impulse to gather the girl up, quilt and all, and hold her until her dry sobbing subsided. Instead, she spoke briskly to the shrouded head.
“The term is only a month old. It’s not too late to pull yourself together. You owe me two essays, which I’m going to give you a chance to make up. I talked to your teachers in biology, Spanish, and math. They are willing to let you redo your first month’s assignments. Today is Monday. You can turn your papers in to me this Friday.”
Rachel stood. “I’m going to try to talk to your mother, but if she’s decided to withdraw from life I can’t make her return. Lara, if you don’t have an aunt or grandmother you can live with then you need someone who cares about you to talk to. You can talk to me whenever you feel like it, but I’d like you to have someone you feel close to. Are you staying in touch with your friends?”
“All they care about these days is who’s going to the homecoming dance with who. They don’t want to hear about Chip, even if it’s just memories about him. If I talk about him, they tell me not to be morbid. They don’t want to think about the war, or people getting murdered, or even mothers who lock themselves in their bedrooms. Melanie’s mother’s a drunk. That doesn’t stop people from being friends with her!”
The quilt muffled Lara’s voice, and Rachel had to lean forward to hear her. “Robbie Schapen?” she suggested.
“Robbie Schapen?” Lara shrieked, pulling the quilt from her head. “The Schapens hate us. Mr. Schapen arrested Mom, and Nanny Schapen gloated about it on their website. Junior got Chip in trouble—he’s why Chip ran away from school and died. Robbie Schapen is—a—a—hornworm from a whole family of vermin.”
“Whatever a hornworm is. Maybe you should try talking to him. I was Junior Schapen’s teacher, too, you know, and Robbie isn’t the least bit like him.”
Rachel put the chair back under the desk. “Your father and Blitz Fosse are over nailing the entrances to the Fremantle house shut, so if you were the person who broke in there you should know that it will be much harder to get in and out now. And if you are smoking the marijuana that was taped to Gina’s photograph, don’t forget that Arnie Schapen is a deputy sheriff. If he really does hate your family, he’d be happy to have
the chance to arrest you for possession. You in juvie court is not something that would help anyone, least of all Chip.”
Twenty-Six
THE MIDNIGHT DISEASE
WHEN SHE KNOCKED on the door of the master bedroom and no one answered, Rachel turned the knob and walked in. Lara had exaggerated only that one detail, that Susan had locked herself in. The rest of the story was much worse.
The room was dark and smelled of stale sweat, unwashed sheets, and a faint moldy odor that baffled Rachel until she fumbled her way to a light switch. The must came from the old books, stained orange with mildew, that covered much of the bed. More books were on the floor next to it.
Susan was sitting cross-legged against the headboard, wearing gray sweats that hung so loosely on her she looked like a marionette inside a sack. The clothes seemed oddly familiar. After a puzzled moment, Rachel saw they had LAWRENCE HIGH SCHOOL printed up one leg and the lion mascot on the top: Susan was wearing her dead son’s workout clothes. She was surrounded by piles of paper covered with her large, round script; she was holding a pen and pad of paper in her lap.
“Do you write in the dark?” Rachel asked.
Susan stared at her blankly. “I turned off the light for privacy, but that doesn’t seem to mean anything to you since you barged in anyway.”
Rachel wondered where Jim was sleeping. Maybe the sunporch he’d been offering Gina, or even his son’s room. No one could possibly want to sleep in this smelly room, in a bed filled with books and paper.
“What are you writing?”
“Words. Words.” Susan waved her hands as if that would explain her meaning.
Rachel picked up a piece of paper at random.
War the answer to a mother’s prayers. War, Peace, War, Peace. Peace you live without. Find peace, find death, find war, find life, lose all, the dice throw. Milton, Shakespeare, sin of sins.
Rachel let the page fall back onto the bed and picked up one of the musty books. It was an old journal, the entries dating to the 1850s. The book fell open to a page which Susan apparently read often, judging by the intermarginal notes in her round hand. Rachel squinted to make out the faded script, with its high curling fs and ss.
August 24, 1855
I woke alone in the middle of the night, alone save for my babe. Abigail Comfort Edwards: who are you, where are you? Only the wind rushing through the prairie grasses hears me, and it pays me no more mind than if I was one of the hundred thousand grasshoppers buzzing through those grasses all day long.
And then I laughed at myself, a shade hysteric, for I had even forgot that I am no longer Abigail Comfort Edwards but Abigail Grellier, a married lady, mother of a baby boy, and of my precious lamb who lies with Jesus.
Next to it, Susan had written, “Who is Susan Brandon Grellier? Grasshopper.”
Rachel looked at Susan. “Abigail—that was Jim’s great-great-grandmother, I think you told me. It sounds as though she also lost a child. What kept her going?”
“She had a vision,” Susan said. “Her vision sustained her. I had no vision, only the desire for one.”
“What was her vision?”
Susan beckoned to her. Rachel knelt next to her, holding her breath against the full smell of Susan’s unwashed body.
“She saw the Mother of God in chains. A slave in chains, holding her broken Son, also a Negro slave,” Susan whispered urgently in Rachel’s ear, digging bony fingers into her shoulder. “She told no one. Congregationalists don’t believe in the Madonna the way Catholics do—she thought her family would scorn her. But the Mother of God sustained her through every loss: her oldest child, her husband, and after her husband died she lost her last baby. Through it all, her vision kept her upright.”
She shook Rachel’s shoulder, making sure she was listening. “Pride. The angels fell because of pride. I think that’s right, don’t you? To be punished for too high an ambition?”
“Susan! God isn’t a demon. He doesn’t sit in His heaven pouring judgment out on us for being human, and He certainly doesn’t start wars or send young men like Chip to fight and be killed in them because their mothers longed for visions.”
“Etienne. Why can no one call him by his right name?”
“Etienne, then. God did not choose for Etienne to die, to punish you or Jim or Lara, or even Etienne himself. God knows what it’s like to lose a child, after all: His own Son died a painful death, and God Himself stood by helpless while it happened.”
Susan looked at her with the same blankness, as if Rachel were a stranger spouting Albanian or Hungarian, some incomprehensible language. “The empty womb. You preach about God and children from your empty womb. It’s a joke—do you see?—a pun. Jesus was in the empty tomb; you’re in the empty womb.” She picked up the pad of paper in her lap and began writing again.
Rachel could tell her own face was scarlet, the stereotype of the old-maid schoolteacher, no knowledge of the outside world allowed except what she learned from books. She wanted to cry out, “I’ve loved and lost, even a pregnancy I’ve lost,” but she only said, “I’d like to change the sheets, Susan. You’ll feel more comfortable in a clean bed.”
Susan didn’t pause or look up. “I don’t want to be comfortable.”
“And Jim? And Lara? Do they need to be comfortable?”
Susan kept scribbling. “If you came here to lecture me on my duties as a wife, don’t. You never married. You know nothing about it.”
“You have two children, Susan. Lara is starting to fail her classes, she needs you. Do you want to lose her as well as Chip—Etienne?”
“I don’t have a quotation dictionary. Who said ‘the sin by which the angels fell’? I was sure it was Milton, but I tried to find it on the computer and couldn’t. Didn’t you study poetry in college? I did. It’s how Jim and I met. He took a poetry class as an elective his junior year, in between Topics in Plant Pathology and Building a Business Plan for Your Farm. I used to know lines and lines and lines of Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but after all these years of working the land I can’t remember the simplest poems. Can you give Lara a quotation dictionary to bring home for me?”
“Susan.” Rachel stopped, not knowing how to go on. They didn’t offer a course in managing destructive families when she was studying education. Finally, she decided to ignore the sidetrack on poetry.
“Lara has to do her homework. That’s all I’m sending home with her, her homework. You must read it, you and Jim both. I’m going to tell Lara you both have to sign it before I’ll look at it: I need to know you’re paying attention to what she’s doing.”
“She’s fifteen. Girls of fifteen were running households a hundred fifty years ago. Do you think we’re too easy on our children? Do you see that in the classroom, Rachel? A generation of young people we haven’t expected enough from? The last true measure of devotion, does any child know that anymore before they go for soldiers? I used to know the answer to that quotation but I can’t think what it is anymore.”
“Lincoln at Gettysburg,” Rachel said helplessly. “‘That from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion.’ I doubt that Chip would consider you hiding up here in his dirty sweats an appropriate measure of devotion. Won’t you get up, get out of bed long enough for me to wash the sheets and wash those clothes?”
At that, Susan did look full at her, eyes blazing. “I will not have you wash the last trace of my son Etienne from my body. Nor may you tell me what he would or wouldn’t consider appropriate devotion. I am his mother. If the mother of Jesus could weep at His grave and hug Him to her, in all His blood, why can’t I hug my dead son’s sweat to me? They wouldn’t let me see him covered with blood. I can only feel his sweat.”
“What will you do if Lara turns to drugs? Or if Jim can’t get in all the crops? Your organic sunflowers looked pretty withered to me.”
“Don’t preach to me, Rachel Carmody. You know nothing about farming and very little about chil
dren.” She turned back to her pad, scribbling madly, ripping sheets of paper off and tossing them aside.
For the second time that evening, the Grellier women, divided on every other point, had accused Rachel of preaching. Was she? Had she spent so many years in front of a class that she assumed she knew better than anyone else?
Rachel picked up one of Susan’s discarded pages.
Some buried Caesar bled last full measure of devotion—we the living living living are the walking mocking dead dead dead—devotion—true devotion—best friend—Jesus Jesus Jesus no gods before ME I take your sacrifice and condemn you to death. Meddling
Rachel got unsteadily to her feet. “At least take your medicine, Susan. Maybe it will help you find your way to an authentic vision.”
Susan didn’t answer. Rachel went back out to the dark hall and groped her way to the stairwell. Her face was ashen, her hands trembled. When she saw Blitz and Jim in the kitchen, she fought back tears with an effort. The headache had returned, making it hard for her to see.
“I’m afraid I was in over my head with both Lara and Susan. I’m sorry—I thought I could do some good, but all I did was stir them up.”
“Yep. It’s that kind of time. I appreciate you trying, Rachel, I truly do.” Jim clasped her shoulder and let it go. “I guess I should think about some supper for Lara.”
“Why don’t you sit down, have a beer with Blitz? I’ll think about dinner—it’s the least I can do, maybe the only thing I can do.”
Next to him, Blitz nodded. “Good idea, Ms. Carmody. Jim and I’ve been harvesting soybeans all day, and we are about as tired as is possible without actually falling down.”
Rachel scrubbed out the sink, washed the stack of dirty dishes that had piled up since Jim or Lara had last felt like cleaning. The mindless housework was calming, even though her feet hurt through Gina’s bandages.
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