Farthest House

by Margaret Lukas

  She shed no tears when he left, and if I’d been physical enough to weep, my tears would have been for joy, not because Derrick was gone, but because Willow dared to face a dragon, and in the process she learned much about herself. Would it be enough?

  28

  Willow named the shadow Perpetual, sure Sister Dominic Agnes would approve of the name. She wasn’t certain of the exact day or week when Perpetual moved entirely out, though she knew if she cared to sit and spend an evening remembering all the wrongs done to her, Perpetual would walk eagerly back through the door and snuggle close and bring out long colored fabrics from her basket of memories.

  In October, she took the GED, and in January she started college, thanks to the woman who took drop-ins and to whom Prairie went eagerly.

  The March afternoon Mrs. Crat called to say she had something she needed to bring right over, Willow had just put Prairie down for a nap and pulled out a geology book, hoping to grab an hour of study before picking up the apartment and starting dinner. As he did a couple of nights a week, Julian was stopping by for dinner. She’d be serving him the only thing she had in the cupboard: canned tuna with noodles. Again.

  With Mrs. Crat sitting on the red sofa, Willow was annoyed, even angry. She had things to do, and since Mrs. Crat hadn’t once visited before, why was now so important? According to Papa, she’d come to the hospital after Prairie’s birth. He and Derrick were in the parking lot ready to leave when Derrick saw her car, hurried over, and a moment later, she drove off. Willow supposed Derrick’s bruised face might have had something to do with it.

  Sitting with her gloved hands clamped over the top of her purse, Mrs. Crat pushed back her wool headscarf, but she refused Willow’s offer to take her coat. Perched on the edge of the sofa, a simple push of her thick legs would have her standing and out the door.

  The clock on the stove read only 2:30, early afternoon, but heavy clouds darkened the windows and made the hour seem much later. Another gust of wind snaked between the north window and its casement, sending out a long moan.

  “If Derrick fathered your child,” Mrs. Crat said, opening her purse, “I don’t mind helping.” She pulled out a white envelope and extended it. The words CRAT CONSTRUCTION and the address were in large black letters in the upper left-hand corner.

  Willow stared at the envelope. She didn’t want money. She’d yet to receive any aid from Derrick, and though Papa disagreed with her, she refused to involve the courts. Lawyers and a judge might lead to Derrick getting Prairie for an hour, an afternoon, or god-forbid, a weekend. That time would also be with Mary, who had every reason in the world to hate Prairie. So long as neither Derrick, nor his family, sent even the pittance to buy Prairie a pair of shoes, they couldn’t lay claim to her, Willow hoped. Now, Mrs. Crat, her knees locked together, her rutabaga face unmoving, had her hand outstretched.

  If I refuse the money, Willow wondered, will Derrick still get credit? After all, his family tried. She wondered too, about the hand-delivery rather than simply mailing it? Had Mrs. Crat come in order to relish the sight of her good works and inflate herself to the stature of savior?

  Derrick’s mother pushed the envelope farther into the space between them. “Oh, heavens,” she barked, “take it.”

  Willow watched her hand lifting and accepting the nearly weightless envelope—a check, not bulkier bills—which meant there would be a cancelled check, proof in court. Thank you skittered around in her head, but she couldn’t force the two slight words off the end of her tongue. She put the envelope beside her on the chair, undecided about what to do with it. “It’s March, a couple days shy of April; Prairie was born in July.”

  Mrs. Crat frowned, her shoulders unmoving inside her dark coat. “Eight months. Your child is hardly grown.”

  Willow wanted to chuck the envelope back, but with it lying so close she couldn’t help but think of her bills: Rent, utilities, babysitter, food for two, keeping a car running, paints, and tuition. She washed Prairie’s clothes in the bathroom sink, hung them on a small wooden drying rack. Month by month since Derrick’s leaving, she’d been sinking further into debt, going through Mémé’s stipend and charging what she couldn’t pay for. The bills arrived in colored envelopes now, and still she lied to Papa: “I’m fine, quit worrying.” He most likely wrestled with his own mountain of bills, and asking for help would get him started again on how she should be hauling Derrick’s ass to court. Now, here was a check that might be for a thousand or five thousand dollars.

  “I didn’t expect Derrick to just vanish,” she said. Thank God, he had. “I thought he’d at least want to come and see Prairie at Christmas.”

  Mrs. Crat’s boots had left a trail of gray and watery prints from the door to the sofa. “But he’s living in Texas.”

  “Texas?”

  “You didn’t know? It’s a small college. They’re letting him play football.”

  “Did Mary go with him?”

  “Mary’s been sick again.” Mrs. Crat’s fingers clutched her purse. “She needed medical care and was returned to St. Joe’s Psychiatric Hospital.”

  “No surprise there.”

  “It’s a hospital,” her voice was cold, and her eyes glistened. “For people who are sick and suffering.”

  Willow waited. She was about to get an ear full.

  “Derrick was never in any real danger. Your whole affair,” she let her emphasis rest there, “has been devastating to Mary, and—”

  The word danger made Willow’s ears perk up, but it was the word affair that made her cut in. “The affair of our marriage? Or the affair of—”

  “Your marriage, of course,” Mrs. Crat stopped her. “Mary’s such a beautiful girl. It’s awful to watch someone so beautiful suffer.”

  “Because she’s beautiful? Someone a little less beautiful, their suffering wouldn’t matter as much?” She didn’t need an answer. “Besides, Mary won, if you can call Derrick a win.”

  “There’s so much you don’t know. Mary was burned.”

  “I know that.”

  “She’s struggled over the last few years. You can’t blame her. It’s hard being a teenage girl when everyone around you is in those god-awful tube tops and bikinis. She’s had to hide her body, no sleep-overs, and no city pools.”

  Willow managed to keep quiet. She pulled one leg up under herself.

  “Her mother has spent thousands on clothes, trying to convince Mary she’s beautiful, but it hasn’t helped. Probably, just as much money has gone into medications. Having two or three doctors, each unaware of the other, with antidepressants, pain pills, and who knows what else. Years of this. I’m fairly certain she’s started taking illegal things, too.”

  “You mean street drugs?”

  Mrs. Crat hugged her purse to her stomach. “I’m leaving my husband and moving to Texas. I’ve rented an apartment very close to Derrick.”

  The news widened Willow’s eyes. “Divorcing? To be with Derrick? I’ll bet he’s thrilled.”

  “He’s angry, and you know it, but I need to do this. If I don’t go, he’ll leave the church for good. I hope to bring him back to Omaha, eventually. He should have a share in Crat Construction.”

  Willow considered the news. “You came to tell Prairie good-bye?”

  “I need to explain why I haven’t been able to be a grandmother to her.” She let go of her purse and slowly lifted her gloved hands. For several seconds, she stared at them. “Derrick and I were at Mary’s the day of the accident,” she began. “Mary’s mother, Sally, and I were in the kitchen. The kids played in Mary’s bedroom, drawing pictures.” Her eyes sought Willow’s. “Innocent things. They were babies, just first graders.

  “Mary’s father walked in on them and saw something in the pictures. Or said he did. He’s an animal. I know that’s why Sally never had another child. Seeing those drawings, he grabbed Mary by one arm and drug her down the stairs and into the kitchen where Sally and I were making Christmas candy. Laughing, we sipped wine as she chop
ped pecans, and I stood at the stove stirring syrup for hard candy. My pot had been boiling for several minutes, and finally, the candy thermometer had reached 250 degrees.” She began working on a gloved hand, finger by finger, pinching the tip and giving it a slight tug, as if still dealing with pain or the memory of pain. “Just as I was ready to turn the burner off, he barged in. Mary was screaming and scared with his rough treatment. He shook her, making her head snap back and forth as he demanded to know who taught her to draw dirty pictures. He’d been in the kitchen not five minutes earlier and frowned at Sally and me. I suppose we were having too much fun. I know he went looking for something to make a stink over. Sally was trembling, cowering, with panic on her face, and doing nothing.” She stopped, letting her breath catch up, still working the glove off. “Of course, she knew him better than I.”

  Willow pressed her lips together and struggled to keep from showing any aversion to the hand Mrs. Crat revealed.

  “I’m sure Sally knew that keeping still was the best way to handle him, but I couldn’t. The scene made my blood boil. He kept yelling, wanting to know who taught her to draw like that. Mary didn’t understand, other than to know the problem was about drawing. She said your name. You were her friend, and you gave her little pictures from time to time. She used to carry them around. Well, your name really set him off. He hated your father for giving him a second DUI. There may have been other brushes with the law, too. There were rumors.”

  Hearing her name in connection with Mary’s burns was both surprising and upsetting to Willow. She watched as Mrs. Crat began working on her second glove. “That’s how this all started? My dad arrested him?”

  “I wanted to throw my wine at him. Derrick was huddled in the doorway crying, but he was too scared to run home without me. Mary was screaming, and Sally was no help. I told him he was crazy. I even ordered him to put Mary down. Imagine that.” She took a breath. “The rage on his face! I’m sure no woman had ever spoken to him like that, and he wasn’t going to take it from me. He marched toward me, still holding Mary, swearing I was in his house, and she was his kid. Then he heaved her at me and said, ‘Take the little whore.’

  “The distance was only a couple of feet, and she couldn’t have weighed more than forty to fifty pounds. I was taken by surprise and couldn’t grab her fast enough. She seemed all arms and legs, and I couldn’t hold her weight. Her hand slapped the pot handle.” Mrs. Crat took in another deep breath, let it ease out of her lungs, and her eyes filled with the memories. “That big pot, that thick syrup, just bubbling away. Mary landed on the floor, and it flipped and landed on her chest.”

  Willow winced.

  “She let out a few awful, terrible, just terrible screams,” Mrs. Crat said, “and then,” she paused, “I think she went into shock. Her eyes rolled back, and her arms and legs flapped like a child having a seizure. She was dying. Sally was screaming, and Mary’s father unleashed a tirade of blame, cursing me and the day I was born and ‘look what I’d done.’ He didn’t drop to the floor over his daughter. I did. I grabbed the burning pan, threw it off her, and tried to scoop off what syrup I could. It wasn’t like water that cooled fast. It was thick and held the heat. Mary wore a pink T-shirt, no buttons to undo and pulling it over her head would have put the hot mess in her face. At least I knew that.”

  She lifted her hands to show Willow. Pink and white puckered scar tissue rippled from her fingertips, up over her partially webbing fingers, and to her wrists.

  “That pile of thick, boiling syrup,” Mrs. Crat continued, as if it were the image she couldn’t free herself from. “I kept scooping at it, but that wasn’t working. I could only think to put my hands under her shirt and lift the mess up and off her skin.” Her scarred palms cupped imaginary fire. “I tried to keep off as much as I could. The men from the rescue squad cut her shirt off up the back. The candy had cooled enough by then so that it was fused to my hands. I went into the hospital still carrying her shirt and layers of her skin, my hands encased.” Her hands dropped into her lap. “None of us accepted blame. I didn’t, and I provoked him. Seeing his anger, I should have taken Derrick and walked away.”

  Staring at Mrs. Crat’s hands, Willow didn’t know what to say.

  “Mary told me once,” Mrs. Crat continued, “that her parents never talked about that day. She was glad they didn’t. She blamed herself, and she didn’t want to be reminded of her sin: drawing dirty pictures. Maybe that harmed her most, having to look at her burns year after year, thinking she deserved to be disfigured. She should have been in therapy. She should have heard that she wasn’t to blame, but her parents were too afraid. They couldn’t bear her telling the story to outsiders. They just kept medicating her moods, buying her more silk to cover up with, the best car of any teenager in Omaha. She never came to see how adults failed her.” One scarred hand jerked, “Right after the accident, her father, big, important man, marched up to Our Lady of Supplication and included Sister Dominic Agnes in his blaming. He said if she’d been watching her students, she would have known you were teaching Mary to make smutty drawings. He laid down the law: When Mary returned to school, you were to be kept away from her.”

  For comfort, Willow glanced at the paintings on her wall. “Mary’s dad blamed Sister Dominic Agnes, too? And she believed him? That explains so much.” She sank against the soft chair back, considering. A question came to mind, and for a moment she was afraid to ask. “How do you know this? Did Father Steinhouse tell you?”

  The eyes of Derrick’s mother leveled. “That man has been a great help to me. Why does everyone think that’s wrong? He came to the hospital when I needed someone. Every morning since then, he’s taken the time after Mass to talk to me. He’s the only one willing to listen to me and forgive me. My own husband hasn’t.” Her thoughts were jagged sparks of shooting energy. She remembered the morning months after the accident, her bandages freshly off, and with her scarred hands she buttered her husband’s toast, just as she did mornings before the accident. Proud of what she’d done, she pushed it across the table to him. He’d watched as she struggled with the knife, the scarred hands on his food. He looked at his toast and pushed the plate back.

  “You started doing paint-by-number crucifixion pictures.”

  “Father Steinhouse has them hanging. They were gifts from him. Painting those little numbered spaces and opening those little pots of paint were physical therapy. The work helped keep my mind busy, and the pictures reminded me that my suffering was less than Christ’s.” She began working her gloves back on. “The state I was in, each finished painting was an accomplishment. I’d gotten through another month, maybe two, and I wanted him to have them.”

  For so long, Willow had longed for answers, and now that she had so many, she wanted to be alone. She turned to check the time, hoping it would serve as a hint, but the dark windows caught her attention, not the clock. Tiny icy pellets ticked against the glass.

  “After the accident,” Mrs. Crat went on, “I was hospitalized, too, and went back and forth from my room to Mary’s. I went to the cafeteria for candy, ice cream, to the gift shop for stuffed toys, anything to take her mind off the pain and the awful bandaging and rebandaging every few days, the grafting,” she shuddered. “I didn’t leave her alone with Sally. How could I trust that woman? My hands and the pain, while Sally’s hands were pretty as ever. She polished her nails to visit the hospital. I’d earned my place by Mary, and she wanted me there. If her father came, she’d cry until he left. I shouldn’t have come between them, but he threw her at me, and she was like a little, broken angel.

  “I wanted Derrick and Mary to be together. We owed her that. I told myself he loved her, but I suppose he could have hated her for taking me away from him.” She stopped again, her face knitting and fretting, but she needed to say more. “You didn’t come between them. It was me, insisting Mary was the one, not letting Derrick feel as though he had a say in the matter. I didn’t see who else would marry her. My husband was rejecting
me; I didn’t want that for her. It wasn’t Derrick’s life I thought you ruined, it was Mary’s.”

  Willow watched the last of Mrs. Crat’s scarring disappear inside her soft, black gloves. The woman wasn’t evil, and being honest enough to admit she cared more about Mary than her own son took courage.

  The damp boots shuffled on the floor. “I don’t wonder that he watched you. We all did. You were mixed up with everything, and we were desperate to blame an outsider. When I learned you were pregnant, I cried for days. I knew I’d failed Mary and that Derrick hooked up with you as a way to hurt me.”

  Remembering nights in Derrick’s car and his urgency in wrestling her out of her jeans, Willow was certain he hadn’t been thinking about his mother.

  “I’d have celebrated Mary getting pregnant and their marriage.”

  “So, why did you push him to marry me?”

  She shrugged, as if no longer certain. “Our family name. Father Steinhouse believed it was God’s will. My dream for Mary seemed ruined by your pregnancy. Even if Derrick didn’t marry you, there was still going to be a child. And,” for the first time her lips curled, then tipped down as she shook her head, “we were certain it would be a boy and need a strong name. Crats always have boys. My husband is one of six brothers. The brothers all have boys.”

  A slow, hot burn threatened to make Willow scream, but at the same time she knew Mrs. Crat’s Neanderthal thinking meant Prairie was safe. Had Prairie been male, the Crats would be trying to take her.

  “Even after you threw Derrick out,” Mrs. Crat continued, “I needed to concentrate on Mary. I couldn’t have your baby around. I just never knew what Mary might do.”

  “That’s why you’ve had nothing to do with her? Her being a girl and your fear Mary would harm her? Did you also tell Derrick to stay away, or did he decide that?”