Here on Earth

by Alice Hoffman

  They’ve reached an ancient, battered Toyota parked in the last row. Louise waits while March throws open the hatchback and places her purchases inside.

  “Ken Helm lent this to me. An old aunt of his used to drive it.”

  “Lucy Helm.” Louise nods. Lucy Helm was known to be one of the worst drivers in town. People swore the old lady fell asleep at red lights.

  “May be I’ll stay around a little while longer,” March says as she closes the hatchback. “If Gwen really wants to.”

  Poor girl, Louise thinks. The excuses one can make for love; the lies one tells.

  “Well, if you need anything while you’re here, all you have to do is call,” Louise says.

  “You’re a doll.”

  March feels a surge of affection for Louise; she hugs her, but when March gets into the borrowed Toyota, she’s shaking. She knows she’s a liar. She’s well aware that Gwen’s infatuation with an old horse and with—according to Susie, who definitely has her sources—a boy who happens to be her first cousin is not what keeps March in Jenkintown. If anything, such variables should be driving her away. If March were her usual self, she’d be shocked at the possibility of Gwen dating a cousin. Instead, she’s convinced herself it’s puppy love, if that, and will quickly pass if left unchallenged.

  She has to lie about what’s really holding her here, even to herself. Only this morning, she lied her head off over waffles and coffee at the Bluebird’s lunch counter. She actually kept a straight face while she told Susie she was trying to decide what to do next. Maybe a separation would be good for her and Richard’s relationship, and although she’d been talking to Hollis on the phone, accepting that ride home from him hadn’t led to anything. Why, she might even allow Gwen to sign up at the high school and finish out the semester.

  Susie had sat there the entire time with her mouth puckered, as though she’d been eating lemons. For one thing, Susie had already run into Millie Hartwig, who works at the high school cafeteria, and Millie had informed Susie that March Murray’s daughter had registered for classes. For another, Susie couldn’t help but notice there were love bites all up and down March’s neck, which March herself didn’t realize until she went out to her borrowed car to drive home and caught sight of herself in the rearview mirror. After that, March got out a turtleneck sweater to wear, but even dressed in all that insulating wool she gets the chills just thinking about Hollis. She’s like some foolish teenager; she can’t seem to get him out of her mind no matter how hard she tries. Sometimes, he phones her at the exact moment when she’s thinking of him; she carries the phone into the pantry, for privacy, and they talk for hours. Every word he says is interesting to her; she’s never the first to hang up, not even when Gwen knocks on the pantry door and asks what’s going on.

  Liar that she’s become, March doesn’t tell Gwen who’s on the phone, just as she doesn’t admit the truth about her destination when she goes out at night. She has to stop at the pharmacy, she needs to walk for the sake of exercise, she and Susie are going to a movie, into Boston, shopping at Laughton’s, to a lecture at the library. She meets him at the end of the driveway, where he’s waiting in his truck, or now that she has Ken Helm’s old car, she drives herself to the old Highway Motel where Route 22 meets up with the Interstate.

  She is crazy for him, exactly as she used to be. More so, because back then she was a girl who didn’t know any better; she wasn’t somebody’s wife, somebody’s mother, a grown woman who should, by this time in her life, understand the value of caution. A few nights ago, they were on the phone at two in the morning, whispering about what they’d like to be doing to each other, when Hollis suddenly decided he was coming over. March asked him not to—Gwen was asleep in the sewing room, the dog was in the hallway, stretched out by the door—but he had already hung up on her.

  March locked the terrier in the pantry, where it whined all night long. She was waiting for Hollis when he arrived, and she didn’t stop him from kissing her as they stood in the front hall; she didn’t refuse to go up to the attic, or lock the door, or go back to that small metal bed, where they’d made love so many times before. The attic was dusty and there was evidence that mice and starlings had been living there, but March paid no attention. By the time Hollis left, it was already light, although, thankfully, this was one morning when Gwen slept late. March’s lips were puffy and bruised and there were spiderwebs in her hair, but Gwen didn’t seem to notice when she came into the kitchen for some orange juice.

  “Where’s the dog?” Gwen had asked, and only then did March remember she’d left the poor creature in the pantry. When she let Sister out, the dog backed away from March, as if it were the only one who knew what a conniver March really was.

  The cranberry-walnut tart and cookies she’s bought at the farmers’ market, for instance, have a devious purpose: Hollis and Hank have been invited to tea, and March, although she’s no Judith Dale and wouldn’t dream of baking anything herself, still wants to impress her guests. She wants it to be possible for them to all sit down in the same room and, if nothing more, be civil to one another.

  “Don’t have them over,” Gwen said when March approached her with the idea earlier in the day. “Hank’s none of your business, even if we do come from the same family.”

  “There’s no reason to do this,” Hollis told March when she went ahead and invited them over for tea. “They’re kids. It doesn’t matter if we accept them—they’re going to do what they want—and I don’t give a damn if they accept us.”

  Hollis isn’t pleased with the effects of Hank’s infatuation. Hank is even more dreamy and thoughtless than usual. He knocks over cups of coffee and steps on his own feet; he comes into the kitchen in the morning looking so rumpled and confused you’d think he was sleeping in a bale of hay. That little girl of March’s has him all caught up, and it’s truly pathetic to see.

  “Idiot,” Hollis tells him, when Hank is late for school or when he’s forgotten his chores. “Take a good look at yourself.”

  Hollis cannot understand how a person could give up so much control. He couldn’t do it; it’s simply not in his nature. The idea of being told what to do, or how to feel, turns him inside out. After all these years, the greatest pleasure he has ever known was paying off his debt to Alan Murray. Hollis still keeps the itemized bill of all that he owed the Murrays in his wallet, folded neatly into quarters. This is the invoice he was presented with on the day of Henry Murray’s funeral, and it charged for every day Hollis had lived with the family; the estimated cost of all meals had been tallied, along with books and clothing, even toothpaste. Each day he continued to live at Fox Hill raised Hollis’s debt, until it seemed he would never pay it off, and yet, he did.

  All he had planned to do when he went away was earn enough to take March out of there, but the situation got complicated, as it always does when fast money is offered to someone who’s insatiable. The plan changed daily, in terms of exactly how much he would need. First it was enough for an apartment in another town, then in Boston; then it was a house he needed to present to her, a house bigger than the one where she grew up. Finally, it was the land they had surveyed on that day when they hid behind the stone wall. Nothing less would do.

  Hollis didn’t even realize how much time had passed until he came back to town: The boys he’d gone to school with were men now, with wives and families. The linden trees planted around the town square the year he left, thin seedlings that needed to be propped up with posts, had become tall enough to cast shadows that covered the square entirely. If he had been able to buy the land surrounding Olive Tree Lake, he would now be the largest landowner in three counties. If anyone thinks this is meaningless, then he’s never had a banker call him sir; he’s never had one of the residents of town, who once helped tie a defenseless boy to a tree and leave him in the woods at dark, politely wish him a good day and move aside, quickly, to let his old hostage pass by.

  Today, when he knocks on the door at Fox Hill—a sil
ly formality, seeing that he owns the place—Hollis has nearly everything he’s ever wanted, but he’s in a foul mood anyway.

  “Go ahead,” he tells Hank when March comes to the door. “Go in.”

  Hank has dressed in his best clothes for the occasion, and he formally shakes March’s hand.

  “You look so much like Alan,” March says.

  Hank looks at her, confused, uncertain as to whether she’s greeted him with a compliment or a curse.

  “He had your color hair,” March explains, suddenly nervous in the boy’s presence. “But you’re much taller,” she adds when she sees the worried look on Hank’s face.

  “Oh.” Hank nods, grateful to March for granting him that dissimilar feature.

  “What is this supposed to be?” Hollis asks.

  Sister is standing guard in the hallway, emitting a low, throaty growl.

  “It’s a West Highland terrier,” March says. “Judith’s.”

  “Are you telling me it’s a dog?” Hollis says.

  March laughs. “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “Well, then I have to believe it. Seeing how it comes from you.” He moves toward March, and the dog growls again. “What are you looking at?” Hollis asks the terrier, who is watching him warily and snarls when spoken to.

  “She seems to hate you,” March teases.

  “I don’t mind. Let her.” Hank has gone on ahead, so Hollis takes the opportunity to draw March near. “You’re the one whose opinion interests me.” He circles her waist and whispers, “I could show you what I mean. Let’s get rid of the kids.”

  “Kid,” March corrects. “Gwen’s not here.”

  Hank is in the living room, stoop-shouldered beneath the low ceiling, disappointed when he’s told Gwen hasn’t appeared.

  “You’d better watch out,” Hollis suggests to the boy, after March has gone to get the tea both Hank and Hollis will politely force themselves to drink. “If you mattered to her, she’d be here.” He lets the boy think that one over; maybe now Hank won’t let himself be led around by the nose.

  But in fact, Gwen’s decision not to be at home for her mother’s little get-together has nothing to do with Hank, or her desire to be with him. When she left the house early that morning, with a bunch of carrots in her pockets, she had already made up her mind that she wouldn’t be home at the appointed hour. She walked quickly down the road to the Farm in the cold morning air, with no intention of being sociable with Hollis, or allowing her mother to butt into her life. Gwen likes the empty road these days; if she’s quiet enough she can spy weasels running along the stone walls and field mice searching the ground for acorns. To her great surprise, Gwen likes all sorts of things she would never have thought she could tolerate.

  Back in California, Gwen would sleep all day if allowed; she’d slam at her clock radio until she hit the snooze button, and be late for school four days out of five. Who was that girl? she wonders now, as she pulls on a second pair of gloves and jumps over ruts in the road. If she passed by that girl right now, she’d think, Poor lazy know-nothing, and she’d keep right on going. Most days, Gwen is at the barn at five-thirty, and Tarot is always waiting for her, pushing his nose up against her as soon as she enters his stall, searching for carrots and apples. Usually, she doesn’t ride him; instead she brings him down to the farthest, widest pasture and lets him take off. To see him run is to witness a miracle. Every once in a while, on those days when Hank doesn’t meet her down at the fields with a thermos of coffee, she does a foolish, dangerous thing. She rides Tarot at full speed, which is nothing compared to what he used to do on the track, but leaves her breathless all the same.

  The other morning, when she woke at five, Gwen could not get dressed and rummage through the refrigerator for Tarot’s treat, then run down the road at her usual hour. Hollis was in the hallway. She knew he was there before she leaned up on her elbows in order to peer out the door of the sewing room where she sleeps. She smelled fire, and that’s the way he smells. Later, when Gwen went into the kitchen she noticed the scent of fire on her mother as well. Still, she didn’t say a word. She simply went about her business, despite the lump in her throat. Sure, her mother wants to pretend nothing has happened; she wants to have everyone over for a little tea and cookies and act as if Hollis wasn’t in their kitchen before dawn with his hands all over her. To hell with that, in Gwen’s opinion. To hell with her.

  Anyway, maybe Gwen’s wrong in her assessment. Maybe her vision was cloudy and they were simply talking; they’ve known each other forever, after all. Still, whenever Gwen sees Hollis—which, thank goodness, is hardly ever—she always turns away and acts as though she’s unaware of his presence. Even if she’s standing in his field, with a horse that legally belongs to him, she turns the other way.

  Mind your own business, that’s what she tells herself when she starts to wonder about her mother and Hollis. Go forward. Concentrate on your own life. That’s what she tells herself, but it isn’t working. She wonders if what she feels for Hollis is hate. It’s not solely on behalf of her poor, unsuspecting father that she feels this; it’s the way Hollis has treated Hank. He’s horrible to Hank, he bosses him around as though Hank were his servant, and Hank doesn’t even seem to notice. That’s what’s so awful. He looks up to Hollis. He thinks the world of him.

  The first time Gwen went to Hank’s room, on an afternoon when Hollis had gone to Boston on business, she burst into tears. The room was so neat and tidy and devoid of possessions. It was as if Hank were a boarder, someone merely passing through, when in fact this has been his room for thirteen years. The wool blanket on his bed was threadbare and the paint on the walls was peeling. Gwen sat at the foot of the bed and wept. Hank thought it was something he’d done or said and he kept apologizing, which only made her cry more. There was such loneliness in that room, in the cracks along the ceiling and the bare walls, that Gwen was all the more aware of how lonely she herself has always been.

  The strangest thing is that now that she’s really, truly in love with someone, they haven’t had sex. They kiss, they touch each other, but it’s not the right time to do anything more, they both feel that. This is a backward universe she’s in; all that she wouldn’t have understood before makes sense to her now. She doesn’t want her mother in on this, it’s too private, too perfect, and she’s certainly not going to sit and politely sip a cup of tea in the parlor while her mother interrogates Hank about what his favorite subject is at school, or whatever question parents think most reveals a boy’s character.

  It is, after all, Gwen’s last day of freedom; she’s scheduled to attend classes at the high school starting tomorrow. And so this afternoon she has trekked over to the library, where Mrs. Miller teaches her how to use the microfilm so she can look Tarot up in old newspapers. The library in Jenkintown is a wonderful place built out of local brownstone. There are two reading rooms, furnished with old leather couches and well-worn chairs. It may not be the Boston Public Library, or the main branch of the San Francisco Public Library that her father takes her to, but so far Gwen has discovered six books about horse racing and Tarot is in two of them. Back then, his full name was Blue Moon’s Tarot’s Deck of Fortune, called after the Blue Moon farm in Virginia, where he was sired. There is his photograph as he heads for the finish at Belmont. There he is in the colors of Guardian Farm—blue and white—in the winners’ circle at Saratoga.

  “You like racehorses?” some old man asks Gwen as she pages through the books. It’s Jimmy Parrish, who ran the stable at Guardian and worked at Pimlico when he was a boy.

  “I guess I do,” Gwen admits.

  Jimmy Parrish sits down across from her and begins to talk about his good old days. He’s so excited Gwen smiles and lets him ramble on as she looks at photographs from great races of the past. She’s not really listening until he starts to talk about Guardian Farm. If he remembers correctly, the families of the two men who were killed filed suit against Mr. Cooper, which pretty much finished the
stable and wiped out the family financially. One of the men had been a jockey, the other a trainer from Louisiana, both men who knew their horses. Accidents happen, of course, but with Tarot situations always seemed premeditated. People thought the entire family was crazy when a few months after the out-of-court settlements they saw Belinda Cooper, God rest her soul, riding that racehorse as if he were nothing more dangerous than a Shetland pony.

  That is when Gwen closes her book. Dust rises up from between the pages in a little gray cloud. “That’s my name too,” she tells Jimmy. “Cooper.”

  When he realizes this girl is Richard Cooper’s daughter, Jimmy throws his arms around her as if she were a long-lost granddaughter. “I can’t believe it’s you,” he cries. He actually becomes so loud and teary that the librarian, Enid Miller, comes over and informs him if he doesn’t quiet down he’ll have to leave, which is what Gwen and Jimmy Parrish decide to do.

  “So who was Belinda to me?” Gwen asks when she and Jimmy are leaving the library. Gwen has her arms filled with books she’s checked out. As they go down the stone steps of the library, she keeps her elbow out, in case Jimmy Parrish should slip on the wet leaves and need something to hold on to.

  “She was your aunt. Your father’s older sister. Dead nearly twelve years. And her son, who she named Cooper, has been gone for at least five. Your grandparents—the mother and father of Belinda and your dad—died in a terrible accident at the devil’s comer. That’s the turn where Route 22 meets up with Guardian Farm.”