Derek Ernest Williams is born by emergency cesarean on April 22, weighing seven pounds four ounces. Afterward, the first person to visit (besides Derek, who had been with her throughout) is her sister Paige.
“There she is,” Paige says with feigned cheerfulness.
“You made the drive by yourself?” Linda says.
“About that,” Paige says. “How would you like some help settling in at home with the new baby?”
So Diane has left her, Linda thinks. The Williams girls are incapable of maintaining a relationship, just like their mother. As pale as her sister is and given the gifts her sister has brought—flowers and balloons and a plush dog, not even from the hospital gift shop—Linda understands that Paige is scared; like their mother, fear seems to be the overriding force directing Paige: fear of rejection, fear of falling behind, fear of being left alone, fear of commitment, fear of death, and perhaps most especially, fear of life.
* * *
• • •
After the fall, after her son decides he’s through waiting, that he will be born now, Linda lies in the hospital bed, feeling the wound of her belly, her body sliced open to retrieve the child and stitched up like a football. It’s been two days, and she doesn’t want to hold her baby, will only concede when the nurses and lactation specialists insist. Not that his cries leave her unaffected, but she isn’t sure her incision is as sturdy as the doctor says.
Deep down, Linda worries that she doesn’t have a chance of being a good mother, having no model herself. She worries she holds a deep deficit inside; isn’t her failed marriage proof that she’s tainted?
In the time since Ernest DeWitt’s final, fatal stroke, Linda has been reconsidering what love is. Having loved Ernest so briefly, she figures that, logically, it should be easier to let him go. Yet she wants to suffer—suffer deeply—and the fact that she suffers so little weighs on her conscience, as if it belittles Ernest, the importance of him. She begins to wonder if it was love, or if love comes only after much more time.
She’s known many women whose lives left them bereft of love, and she doesn’t intend to become like them: gray, sullen, with a kind of maniacal energy simmering lewdly beneath the surface. So in the interim—for that was how she’d thought of it; she never harbored delusions that Ernest would recover—she began moving her heart toward Derek. It didn’t occur to her to move her heart toward her son. She always took for granted that after the birth she would just—snap!—love him.
Before Ernest, when she was still in Texas with Nathan, she lived in fear for his life. Whenever he worked late, when the news reported a fatal car crash on U.S. 290—which seemed to be every day—Linda tried to steel herself for a phone call. When she was a preteen, when her grandfather battled cancer, Linda had watched Grandma Dinah try to cope. Linda saw her grandmother’s denial, her anger, watched her heart break day after day, as Linda’s grandfather let go a little at a time.
Linda was thirteen, Paige eleven, the first time their mother left. Paula and Jared had fought all afternoon, and around dinnertime, Paula said she needed some time to herself, and she got in her truck and drove off. She did this from time to time. Not to be the one waiting, Jared left in his truck, too. Derek had retreated to his bedroom. It felt like the sisters were alone in the house.
The night air that pressed in through the window screens turned cool and damp. Linda and Paige fell asleep in front of the television and were jolted awake when an infomercial started up, some middle-aged man shouting about his miracle cleaning product. It was a Wednesday night in mid-April. The sisters didn’t talk as they slipped on their nightgowns, brushed their teeth side by side in the cramped upstairs bathroom. But neither wanted to go to sleep. They left the doors unlocked and the windows open, as if afraid that a secured lock would deter their parents from returning. Yet, with the house unsecured, anyone might walk in. Linda was starting high school next fall, so very grown up, but this situation made them both feel like children. She was keenly aware of how small they all were, she and Paige, and also Derek, who was twelve and hadn’t yet hit puberty.
To distract themselves, the girls popped popcorn, the smell of which brought Derek down from his room. They threw more of it at one another than they ate, jumped on the couch, then raided the pantry and drank a warm two-liter of Faygo cream soda while a tape played in the VCR. They slept that night on the couch, piled together, the snow on the TV a welcomed glow after the movie finished. This is how her stepdad found them when he sloshed in the next morning.
At least he had the good sense to realize he was in no fit state to parent. He moved his stepdaughters and his son to his mother’s farm. Didn’t the fact that Dinah had allowed them in constitute a kind of love? They may not have been blood, but they were still family.
Was love simply a willingness to put someone else’s needs before your own? Beth had done that, moving her children back to River Bend to give them a more stable life even though she was obviously miserable here. Her sacrifice had to take a lot of strength, more than Linda has given her credit for.
* * *
• • •
During Linda’s hospital stay, Derek visits regularly, both during and after his shifts. On the third day, he picks up the baby, nuzzles his face into the newborn’s soft neck, and removes his shirt for a kangaroo session, skin to skin. Then he places the baby in Linda’s arms. She’s too tired to protest.
“I’m worried about you,” he says, and she manages a smile. For him.
And as Linda holds her child, holds him just for the sake of holding him, as she feels him against her bare chest, the flutter-beat of his heart and the fuzz on his head, she decides that love can come instantly. She feels certain that it will deepen with time—she can feel it already deepening now—and understands that that won’t cheapen the love she feels in this moment.
Elizabeth DeWitt
29
Coming home from a long day of work, I no more than step into the house when the babysitter takes me quietly by the sleeve and shows me into Dan’s bedroom. I just want to make dinner and relax, but she insists, a serene smile on her face, and when we get to the bedroom, I find both of my kids in there together, a sprawl of toys and stuffed animals around them, Dan sitting in the middle of the mess, a book in his lap, his sister snuggled up against him. He’s reading to her. My five-year-old is reading to my two-year-old, and it instantly breaks and remakes my heart.
BITS AND PIECES
The McFadden Funeral Home is the only house left in River Bend older than the DeWitt home. It sits across the street from the park, as if to bookend the journey: from childhood to the grave. At present, the north-facing wall of the funeral home is torn away and tarped for renovations. All the windows are open, a box fan droning in each. The day is hot for mid-May, and the fans manage only to blow the hot air around. The marquee in front announces today’s service in memory of Ernest DeWitt. Beth had a terrible time scheduling the funeral because her mother, Gretchen, insisted she come, but couldn’t make it to River Bend any sooner than today.
Beth holds herself perfectly still in the front row, head bowed so that her neck seems to melt into her bosom. Her eyes are heavy, with dark circles exaggerated by her makeup, which has smeared from the heat. She looks tired enough to sleep for a week. Her hair, normally pressed sleek, has gone nappy and gray at the roots. It’s so hot and humid, the summer just starting up, that Beth figures what’s the point anymore? Why torture her hair straight, when it’ll just go frizzy the second she leaves the house? If the weather would just break. It hasn’t rained since last month’s flood.
Linda has lost so much weight since Ernest’s death that if you didn’t know her, you might not even realize she’d just given birth. She wears a drab dress that sags off of her, revealing the top of her bra’s satin cups. She holds hands with Derek Williams. Next to Derek, Skyla sits wearing a black skirt that’s far too short for a funeral. She k
eeps leaning forward, her knees not quite together, and making a show of not looking across the aisle at Dan Hansen. At the end of the row, Paige bounces Linda’s baby, making the most ridiculous faces at him, even though his eyes are too new to really focus. Paige has been staying with Linda and Derek—to help with the baby, she says, though, really, she needs some time to get back on her feet after splitting with Diane.
Up front, the pastor rambles on. It’s hard to hear him over the drone of the box fans. There’s a laziness to this day, a kind of comfortable tranquility that isn’t wholly unpleasant. Beth feels as if she could stay in this folding chair forever, as if her rear, which went numb ages ago, is now a part of it. Her family surrounds her, Dan restless, shifting in his seat regularly, Jeanette still and quiet in her eerie way. Between Beth and Jeanette, Beth’s mother, Gretchen, sits with her head on Beth’s shoulder. She’s crying loud enough to be heard over the fans. Divorced over three decades and weeping like a new widow. Meanwhile, her teal pantsuit and the matching satin headscarf look celebratory. Still, Beth’s whole family is here—what’s left of them at any rate—and for the moment, she almost feels okay.
When the service is over, Beth and Linda both stay seated. Beth studies the enlarged picture of her father at the front of the room, printed on poster board and leaning against an easel. In the picture, Ernest is not smiling. They’d been unable to find an in-focus picture where he was, as if his happiness were a covert thing.
After hesitating, Linda rises from her seat and takes her baby back from Paige. Linda jiggles the baby a little as she makes her way over to Beth. “Want to meet your brother?”
Beth looks surprised, then alarmed. And then her face relaxes. She even smiles, sort of.
“What’s his name again?” She reaches for the baby and runs a finger along his soft baby toes, which curl and kick at her touch.
“Derek Ernest Williams.”
Derek steps up next to Linda, resting one hand on the small of her back. He kisses the top of Derek Jr.’s head. Jeanette slides in next to Beth, wrapping her sweaty arm around her mother and letting it hang there limply. Dan soon joins them, if for no other reason than to avoid Skyla.
This is what Ernest DeWitt has left behind: bits and pieces that almost resemble a family.
* * *
• • •
After the funeral, the town shows up at the DeWitt house bearing casserole dishes, flowers, ice cream, ham sandwiches on white bread. Beth has not invited anyone for refreshments, but they’ve come anyway. Someone, Linda maybe, opens all the windows in the house. Paige sets out paper plates, napkins, utensils. Beth finds herself in her own backyard—for it is hers now—under the shade of her own mulberry tree, eating Frito pie with people she always thought hated her.
“Your father was a good man,” Derek Williams says, setting out lawn chairs. He takes a seat next to her. “Don’t give me that look. I mean it. He was a truly decent person. I can’t tell you how many times he came out to fix our tractor when Dad couldn’t get it running. He was more than happy to let us pay him in corn, too, come fall.”
“He kept my car going,” Linda says. “At least until the engine crapped out.”
“He helped with the fall harvest, too,” Skyla says. “The year Grandma was sick.”
Beth feels her face pinching up. She can’t help it. What’s their game here?
“Point is, you can listen to the gossip from people who didn’t know Ernest,” Linda says, “but they only saw his faults.”
Beth takes a bite of Frito pie. In the shade like this, with a breeze blowing, if she sits perfectly still, she’s almost comfortable. She figures it won’t last, this closeness, this kinship. As soon as the day is over and they go their separate ways, she’ll likely never speak to these people again. Her mother drove back home as soon as the funeral was over. A three-hour drive, she said—even though it was only an hour, tops—and she might as well get going. She’d made her appearance, her show of grief. She was done. Beth has no doubt Linda and Derek will leave soon, too, and will be done with her. But then again, they might surprise her. Sometimes people do.
* * *
• • •
Beth wanders into her house in the afternoon to put away leftovers. Gatherings like this, people tend to leave food out in the sun—sandwiches and salads laden with mayonnaise—ripening and covered in flies. Nobody will be getting salmonella on Beth’s watch.
As she’s rearranging items in the fridge, she hears the toilet flush. Someone clomps down the hall in work boots. She’d thought herself alone in the house, and now her instinct is to freeze, to slip into the space between the fridge and the wall, but she fights the urge. Instead, she peeks her head out of the kitchen to see Mikey making his way back to the door.
“Hey there,” he says, and in the daylight it occurs to Beth that his voice is too deep for a man his size: He’s scarcely taller than Beth. He sounds like a man who has put years of practice into speaking. He stops in the kitchen doorway.
“I wanted to tell you how sorry I am at Ernest’s passing.” His thick eyebrows knit together. He looks truly sorry, his hand raised slightly as if he’s considering taking her hand.
Beth hesitates. She isn’t sure whether she wants to ruin Mikey’s opinion of her father, on the day of his funeral of all days, but on the other hand, Ernest is gone, and there’s no need to protect him anymore. And her needs matter.
“You know my father was friends with him?”
Mikey’s eyebrows knit even closer, almost joining each other.
“Gilmer Thurber,” she adds.
“I didn’t know that. I didn’t know Gilmer Thurber had any friends.”
“Yes, well. My father believed in giving all men a chance.”
“That was right decent of your father,” Mikey says, “but it must have been very hard for you.”
“He invited him into this house. He was here, many times.”
“Beth—”
“One time, my father saw Gilmer coming out of the bathroom with me. My father had knocked on the door, and Gilmer zipped up so fast he pinched himself. He pulled my pants up—didn’t even bother pulling up my underwear—and walked out of the bathroom with me. We were both walking funny, Gilmer because he’d zipped himself, me because my underwear was all bunched in my pants. He told my father I’d needed help in the bathroom, and my father didn’t even question it, didn’t question this grown man ‘helping’ his six-year-old daughter go to the bathroom.”
“Beth, your father must have—”
“All day, everyone has been reminiscing about how great my father was, but Ernest DeWitt was a child, incapable of facing anything the slightest bit uncomfortable.”
“I’m sure he did the best he could,” Mikey mutters.
“You know that’s shit,” Beth says. “You of all people know how that should have gone down. There should have been police cars screaming to a halt in their driveway the first time it happened. Or the day the school talked to my parents. Or any number of times he should have seen the warning signs. How many more children were hurt because my father did nothing?”
Mikey backs away from her now, retreating to the door. Beth thought he would be on her side, but he’s just like her father. With his hand on the doorknob, he turns back to her. “You know he wanted to testify, right?”
“Bullshit,” Beth says.
“No, he did. He was on the list, but by the time it went to trial, he was already—” Mikey waves his hand here, looking for a way to say it delicately.
“An invalid?” Beth offers.
“He meant well, Beth.”
“Why didn’t he go to the police when it was happening?”
Mikey shakes his head. “We’ll never know why. But he wanted to.”
“Yes, well.” She doesn’t even know what to say. Ernest wanting to help her isn’t the same as him actually
helping her, but maybe it’s a start. Maybe. She feels the fight draining from her.
“My point is, he was sorry he hadn’t been able to protect you. And he held on to that guilt his whole life.”
Beth hears footsteps behind her. She crosses her arms over her chest. She won’t cry in front of these people.
Mikey shakes his head. “Take care, Beth. If you need anything, I’m here.” He lets himself out into her shady backyard. Through the screen door, she watches him retreat down the alley.
“It was that guy on TV, right?” Jeanette says behind her. This time, Beth thinks she might really buy her a bell.
“The guy who did it? He was the one on the news last fall.”
Beth turns slowly to find Jeanette standing just behind her, close enough to be her own shadow. She puts a hand over her eyes to keep from seeing Jeanette, so strong and lovely in the pink sundress she put on after the funeral. Beth can’t find the words to explain what happened here, in this house, decades ago. But then, she doesn’t have to, because Jeanette’s eyes grow round, and she says, “Oh.”
Elizabeth DeWitt
33
I took the kids to the park today. At nine, Dan decided he was too old to play on the equipment, but he entertained himself by collecting fall leaves for a while, then sat down in the shade of a live oak to read. Jeanette, though, wanted me to swing with her, then wanted me to go down the slide after her, not because she was scared, but because, as she said, she wanted me to have fun, too.
We had a little picnic of bologna sandwiches, oranges, and juice boxes, and afterward, when we trekked over to the dumpster to throw our trash away, Jeanette pointed out a sunflower growing from a crack in the concrete. The cement around it was stained aquamarine; some groundskeeper had poured copper sulfate on it, as if it were a weed. Even so, the sunflower was at least four feet tall, taller than Jeanette, its head nodding down to her, heavy with seeds. My daughter grinned up at this perfect sunflower.
The House of Deep Water Page 27