Rebellion

by Molly Patterson

  Owen gave a curt nod. “That’s why she does her work here so well.”

  Poppy raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”

  “Proselytizing, teaching. These are tasks that require a certain ease with words.”

  “Absolutely,” Poppy said. She tilted her head in confusion at this turn in the conversation, though she looked amused, too. “And in another language, no less.”

  “My wife’s skills in Chinese have improved considerably in the past several years. As have those of everyone at this table—with the exception of the Yangs.” He nodded at the Chinese couple and gave a small laugh. “Your Chinese,” he said, addressing them, “was already up to par.” He repeated himself in Chinese, and Yang Taitai, who had not appeared to be following the conversation, murmured that she had no great talent at anything.

  “Only English is still difficult,” Mr. Yang said.

  Owen smiled and then turned back to Poppy. “My point is that there is a great deal of work to be done here that requires something greater than physical strength or medications or—whatever it is that deters an opium addict from the pipe.”

  “Time,” Poppy said. “That is the most important element.”

  “Then perhaps we can agree on something after all.” Owen sat back in his chair and folded his hands over his stomach. It looked to Addie almost like a defensive posture, as if he feared the new missionary might reach over and sock him in the gut.

  “What, on the use of time?” Poppy spread her hands wide. “That’s the only hope we have of doing any sort of good in this country. Yes, there we can agree. But how we use that time is perhaps a matter of debate. For my part, I’d like to try to go at the deeper problems with everything we’ve got—”

  “—and I think it’s wiser to focus on what’s been proven effective,” Owen said.

  “We can’t agree on everything,” Poppy said, “but I hope we’ll find ourselves in accord on the most important issues. And in the meantime, I’d be wise to quiet down so that others at the table may have a chance to speak. My tongue gets away from me sometimes, and I don’t have the energy to go chasing after it.”

  “I’d say you have quite a bit of energy,” Mr. Riddell said with a wry smile. Raising his cup to her, he took a sip of the cooled tea.

  Poppy laughed and lifted her cup in return. “There’s putting me in my place, sir,” she said. Then, glancing around the table, she added, “Don’t you all worry, I’m used to it,” and drained her cup as if it were spirits.

  “You don’t like her,” Addie said that night when she and Owen were back home and in their room, alone. The boys had gone to bed a few minutes before, though they could still be heard talking: Henry’s constant chatter and the punctuations of his older brother contradicting him, or correcting.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t have to say anything. It’s easy enough to tell.”

  Owen continued removing his clothing, layer by layer, as he got ready for bed. His pajamas were laid out on the mattress. He had unfolded the long gown and placed it on the bed, the sleeves lined up straight at its sides.

  “You nearly argued with Mrs. McBride,” she said, trying to catch his eye, but he wasn’t looking up at her. He was methodically moving through the motions of preparing for a night’s sleep. He would be doing exactly the same if they weren’t having this conversation, if it was him alone in the room while she spent the last few minutes of the evening in the sitting room next door, perched on her chair at the desk in the corner, with the lamp’s low flame casting a small circle of light over the desk.

  She spent most nights before bed reading one of the magazines from home or writing letters to her family. There were four different households to write to: her parents, Flora, Will, and Louisa. By far, the most numerous of her letters were to her parents and Louisa, since she knew that Flora and Will saw all the letters sent to her mother. They were in and out of one another’s houses every day; she always imagined the backdoor swinging open and shut, Will knocking the mud off his boots as he hollered to announce his entrance; Flora coming in by the front door, perhaps with her children in tow, four of them now, and Addie was certain she kept them all in line. She knew that all the family back in Ohio had dinner together each Sunday, and she liked to think that they always spoke of her as they passed the roast and potatoes around the table, that her news was their news, too. In her clearest moments, she knew that this was probably not the case. It saddened her to think that after so many years, she must be fading from their thoughts. She often went days without thinking of them. They were family, but distance and time had had their effect.

  Louisa, five hundred miles to the west, received the same intelligence Addie wrote to her mother. And perhaps because she was the other member of the family who was not close to home, Addie felt closer to her sister than she had when they lived together. Writing Louisa, she was honest in a way she was not with any other person. Over the last few years, as Addie’s previous life in America receded into the distance, many of the particulars—the planes and angles of people’s faces, the smell of cherry pie, the way the bell in the chapel on the hill seemed to crack the winter air when it rang in the mornings—gave way to a general idea of home that made her keep writing half-truths to her family who still lived there. She wanted to keep the place preserved as she remembered it, and the idea of sharing her failures put it all in jeopardy. But Louisa wasn’t there, she was no longer part of it, and perhaps it was because Addie hadn’t retained much memory of the farm in Illinois where they’d stayed for a short while three years earlier, that when she wrote to Louisa, it was as if she were sending her letters into the darkness.

  Early on, she had written to her sister about her love and admiration for Owen. Now she watched him as he folded his vest in half, smoothing the fabric before laying it on the bed, and she found herself wanting to scream. The vest would be hung in the wardrobe as soon as he had finished undressing, so what difference did it make whether he folded it or not? “You were abrupt with her,” she said now. “I’m afraid we weren’t very welcoming.” She was willing herself not to go over and pluck the vest off the bed, shake it out, throw it on the ground, and trample on it. She thought of how he had sat quietly at the table after the argument with Poppy, his fingers laced up like a shoe. He’d kept his gaze level on the new missionary as she spoke, and only occasionally turned to Addie with a slight tilt of the chin and a contraction of the brows, as if to ask, This is the woman we have to associate with now?

  After the discussion about opium, it had been clear to Addie that he didn’t approve of Poppy, that he found her—distasteful. This was the most oppressive aspect of his personality: the quiet implacability of his judgment. For a time, early on in their relationship, it had reassured her. His certainty had drawn her to him at their first meeting years before, up at the college on the hill in Marietta, a gathering of young people swept up in the mania for foreign missions. Other young men had been eager and bright-eyed, but Owen was the only one who seemed utterly solid, who was steady without being dull. Such men were described as being firm as oak, and that was exactly the right analogy; cut him open, and you would find concentric rings going down to his very core, a density of matter, not a hollow space to be found.

  Addie was exactly the opposite. She was spongy; she floated about and had no real weight of her own, no center point about which the rest of her was formed. And just like a sponge, she soaked up the substance she floated in. Today, meeting Poppy, she’d had a feeling of being hauled out of the depths, of getting squeezed of all the cold water and set on the shore in the sun and the wind. She felt a lightness that reminded her of an earlier version of herself, though it was not frightening, as it had been before she met Owen—when she had wondered what would become of her, how she could march through her life with eyes held straight ahead. That was what she had thought she required: a steady track, one from which she couldn’t stray. But she had learned that the steady track only went around and aro
und; that in fact, it went nowhere.

  Owen was frowning, showing he was angered or at least annoyed. It was the pants that were the issue, rather than the conversation she was attempting to have with him. He was staring at them as he unbuttoned the front, as if they posed a problem he didn’t know how to resolve. “You said I argued with Mrs. McBride,” he said, looking up at her. “I didn’t. I attempted to explain to her that we know perfectly well how to run our mission. We know better than her, I should think, since we’ve been here for nearly a decade, and she has not.”

  “Whatever our feelings about her,” Addie said, “it has to be a fine thing having another missionary here to help us with our work.” She took a step into the room from the doorway, where she had been standing with one hand on the doorframe. From the shelf below the basin, she took the hand towel and gave it to Owen.

  He nodded and set it on the bed without unfolding it. “I’m sure that Mrs. McBride has much to offer in the way of experience. She’s proven her mettle, I suppose, after sixteen years.”

  Addie nodded, careful not to look eager. It was something, at least, a place to begin.

  Hazel

  13

  After the first time, George didn’t return to the house for another five weeks. I saw him at church and from afar, out in the fields or heading out to the barn as I drove by. He’d lift his hand solemnly and I’d raise mine in return. Usually I had Joe or Debbie with me in the car, and I’d be glad for their mindless chatter because it dammed up my heart, kept it from overflowing, kept me from asking myself what that afternoon together had meant and wondering when and if it would happen again.

  Then one day after the children were back at school, I was running the vacuum in the living room when I turned and saw George standing by the television, hands resting in front of him, no shoes on his feet. I gave a shout, not because I was startled by his appearance but because I’d been wishing for it so hard I thought I’d made it happen. I took several steps forward and then stopped short of being able to touch him. I still had the vacuum hose in my hand, and the machine was still running. But neither of us was thinking of it, and when he folded me into his arms, the nozzle leaped onto his shirt and clung on. He yelped, I laughed, and that chased away any need for conversation.

  We didn’t talk or think. The first time had been like that and the second time, too. It wasn’t until the third time that I let my brain wake up, and then it was only to hush it and put it to bed again. Because by then it was clear that what we were doing was a choice. Once could be an accident, but twice was an affair. How much more, then, was three times, four times, five and six and ten? After a time, you stop counting. But still a part of you knows the score.

  George would let himself inside the porch to take off his boots, balancing on one foot, then reaching down to line them up against the wall. There was deliberation in the act and deliberation, too, in the way that I’d wait in the house, preparing to meet him. It was a form of resistance, every muscle and bone in my body uniting against the mind. Because my mind still insisted on its old authority, saying that this man was my best friend’s husband, and what I was doing was wrong. And when George came in, it wasn’t so simple as more forces on one side than on the other, passion winning out over loyalty. Passion wasn’t the right word, anyway, and loyalty cut in many different directions at once.

  What we were—it was there between us like a sleeping dog we had to take care not to trip over. And so we would pretend we were just neighbors visiting; we’d sit at the kitchen table drinking thin coffee with lots of sugar, and I’d make him some toast and hot milk to dunk the toast in, because he always showed up hungry, even if he’d only eaten his dinner an hour before. We’d talk of nothing—about the weather, about how warm or cool it was. I’d tell him about a quilt I was starting. He’d talk about how the corn was looking.

  There’d come a pause in the conversation. Then he’d take my hand and lead me to the back bedroom, and a half hour later he’d be back on the porch, putting his boots on again. And I’d watch him with every part of my body alert to his leaving. Which is to say with a kind of emptiness that filled my chest, because that hour between us was quickly becoming the beating heart of my day, my week. It was the center, the part that was alive and true. All the rest was simply getting by.

  He only came over when Joe and Debbie were at school, but on occasion someone else would be at the house—Rena, usually, or Iris or Edith from town—and George would take note of the car in the driveway and walk back the way he’d come without knocking on the door. Those days, I’d sit with my heart beating fast, wondering whether this would be the time he didn’t pay attention. Maybe he’d come inside the porch and begin taking off his shoes, and it would only be when my guest went out to see about the noise that we’d all be confronted with the truth of what was going on.

  But of course he always did notice another car in the drive and the next day when I saw him, he’d ask after the visitor in a sociable way. How was Iris? he’d inquire. Or, How was Rena? Every now and then the car in the driveway was his, which meant that Lydie was the one who had come by to see me. We didn’t talk about those times. When I saw him the next day, we’d pretend that he hadn’t tried to come by at all.

  In fact, after several months no topic between us remained untouched with the exception of Lydie. If Karol had been alive, I suppose we would have given him the same wide berth that we gave her, but he was gone, and the same rules didn’t apply. Anyway, I liked talking about Karol with George. He was a good listener, and it was nice to talk over my marriage now that it was done, the last chapter written. Already it was becoming difficult to remember what it felt like to be a wife, and though I didn’t know that I missed it, exactly, I mourned the woman I had been before I was a widow, and this mourning was separate from what I felt about Karol’s absence.

  One day, I found myself trying to explain this difference to George. It was the middle of November, and we were in the car together because the harvest was done and there was no good reason for him to be away from home for longer than a few minutes unless it was to go into town. So we’d met in the parking lot of the IGA, and he’d left his car while I drove the two of us back to my house. This was the second time we’d carried out a rendezvous this way. We wouldn’t be able to do it often, but neither of us had come up with another way to get through the winter.

  To distract us both from the fear of seeing someone we knew—George had pulled his cap down low over his face to lessen the risk of recognition—I was talking about the church potluck I was helping to plan. “I think it must be that I’m used to being alone,” I said, “because I just don’t have patience for the back-and-forth anymore. Dottie has her ideas and I have mine, and I don’t feel like trying to compromise.”

  “Dottie does like her own ideas,” George said from under the bill of his cap.

  “Yes, and I used to be able to work with her perfectly fine. Every year we do this potluck together.” I paused, remembering how I hadn’t helped plan it the year before. I had just lost Karol then, and a church potluck hadn’t figured into my list of concerns. Twelve months later, I had the energy to get riled up at Dottie Acker’s insistence on serving pineapple punch at a Sunday dinner. “Well,” I went on, “I’m finding it impossible to deal with her, and I don’t think it’s because she’s changed. It’s me. I like making my own decisions and not having anyone question them.”

  “Was Karol such a dictator?” George said. “You’re free now from under his thumb?” He smiled to show that he wasn’t trying to offend. Karol had been his friend as well as my husband.

  “Oh, he wasn’t worse than any man about getting his way. It’s only that being married”—I spun the wheel to the right, turning onto Fox Road—“you’re two people, but you’ve got to act as one. With Karol, I got used to compromising. Now it’s just me, I’ve lost the knack.”

  George was quiet. He might have been thinking of the two of us, how we didn’t have to compromise on anyt
hing because there were no decisions to be made together. Or he might have been thinking of his own marriage. For my part, I was recalling the biggest compromise Karol and I had come to. It wasn’t really a compromise. I’d been afraid to have children, and Karol had been afraid to wait. Junior was my fear—I’d been worried by the idea of my brother, returned from the war a silent and unfathomable man prone to violent fits, being anywhere near a baby. But what if he hadn’t disappeared? Was it a compromise Karol and I made, deciding to wait, or was it only that a change in circumstances took away the argument?

  We came up around a blind bend. It wasn’t usually a problem because as long as you were paying attention, you could spot any oncoming vehicles before you reached the spot where the road cut low between two stands of trees. I wasn’t paying attention and drifted left without thinking, and as we came around the curve, I almost clipped a red pickup headed in the opposite direction. In a moment we were past, but my heart was pushing blood against my eardrums in a steady thrum, and several seconds went by before George said in a murmur, “Speak of the devil.”

  My first thought was of Karol; my second was of Junior. But we hadn’t been speaking of either: that was only my own memory churning in silence. “What do you mean?”

  “That was Theo’s truck.”

  Theo was Dottie’s husband. “Do you think he saw?”

  George drummed his fingers on his knee. “Not sure if he saw me, but I saw him: eyes wide as saucers. Probably thought he was about to meet his maker.” He breathed out loudly through his nose—almost a laugh, except it was full of worry.

  I held my breath as we turned onto Sumner. This was the critical moment: we were passing George and Lydie’s house. She wasn’t outside, and the house was set back from the road. Even if she happened to glance out their living room window, even if she was able to tell it was my car, she wouldn’t see her husband sitting in the passenger seat. “What do you want to do?” I asked.