by Jeffrey Lent
So Norman and the girls went round the house and farm and what work needed doing each day for most of a week, each tender and withdrawn into themselves, aware of the others and each also aware nothing could be offered. Odd moments the girls touched their father, he stood with their brief caress and could not touch them back, as if laying hands on them was too close to touching Leah; they accepted this or perhaps with their own swept-tight sorrow feared his. Perhaps they merely understood it. The day he drove to the village to go over legal matters with the lawyer Sutherland and meet with the banker to consolidate accounts the girls cleared the closets and drawers in his room of her clothing and effects, which he noted that evening and winced before the loss and thanked his daughters without speaking, aware his new habit of stepping into the closet before bed to lay his face among her hung garments was not a thing to be continued but a small indulgence best done with.
It was Prudence who first sought him to speak. Norman in the parlor, pipe clamped, a newspaper spread open on his lap as if any moment he’d take it up to read. A fire clucked in the grate. Through the closed door to the kitchen the sounds of Abby washing her hair. Even with the door the sweet woman-scent of soap and wet and steam. The mantelpiece clock dragged its hands up and around and down as if weighing a judgment upon him. A jurist clock. The newsprint before him only so much of everything that didn’t matter. Time, after all, was not made up of small things but a spare handful of events after which the world was changed. He’d thought he learned this in the war. He’d learned nothing. Or he had to relearn the same thing over and over. Which made him doubt that any of it mattered. Of what use, the life of ignorance. The question was central, could not be avoided, could not be answered. After all, he knew it was either a small mind that found solace in the day to day or a thriving mind that found purpose. He could not say which. All he knew was he owned neither. And then heard her steps coming downstairs, pictured her before he saw her, the navy high-necked dress spread evenly with a pattern of frail fine white ovals, her feet bare, still corned and calloused despite the early snow and the chill of upstairs, the mass of uncared-for pumpkin hair, her splotched skin spread over features broad and rough and true, her body beneath the dress the duplicate of his sister. He even knew by something purpose-filled in her downward tread that she was coming to him. That she had something, some message, to deliver. And he smoked his pipe and tilted down to the paper and waited for her.
She said, standing over him, before him, her gravity keeping her from sofa or chair, “Got something to tell you.”
“What’s that?”
She scowled, her lips pressed. “I should’ve told you before now.”
He slowly folded the newspaper and placed it on the side table. Palmed his pipe and laid that hand in his lap. “What should you’ve told me before?”
She shook her head. “It’s nothing what you’re thinking. Nothing to have changed anything.”
“Did she talk to you? Tell you something?”
“No. It’s nothing like that. No, she didn’t talk to me.” Her eyes flat and squarely upon him now. And he knew she was not lying and knew she was not quite telling the truth either. Guessed she held some information intuited or overheard or guessed at, arrived at in some fashion she either didn’t completely trust or didn’t feel was hers by right to tell him. A right she’d concluded and so was staunch by. He admired this of her as much as it frightened him; wondering what in life would wear this thin for her. Sooner or later, most everything.
He said, “What’s your news then?”
“No news. Just something I got to tell you.”
He waited, then nodded.
“I hate it,” she said. “Hate telling on myself. Hate that I have to. Oh boy, I hate it like hellfire. Me and my big pride. Honest Prudence. Prudent Prudence. So much pride, pride like my big fat foot in my mouth. And that’s what happens, isn’t it. You always get found out. Little thing like a nettle gets under your skin and just stays there, burning away at you. Like a botfly dug in and festering up till the worm crawls out.”
“Honey.” He interrupted her. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, I know it. See? Here I am, so brave, talking stupid circles.”
“Why don’t you just sit and tell it. Get it over with.”
She drew herself to. “I’ll stand. I’m not proud of this.”
“I can see that.” He lifted his pipe and deployed tobacco smoke to signal he held no prejudgment and was inclined to forgiveness. He was curious now, almost wondering if her design was to draw him forth. And if she intended this, how he’d respond.
She said, “When Mother caved for me to get that Scupper dog; that was—when—five years ago, six, the spring. You recall what a big rough clumsy fool puppy he was. All over everything. Couldn’t stand next to a person without treading on top of their feet. Like he didn’t know his own size. And lord knows he’s still the same way but he’s grown up some. And Mother laying down the law about his staying in the woodshed, I guess that helped him some. Although maybe its just his getting smarter, older. And to tell the truth, long as I’m confessing, there’s been many a night I’ve slipped down to lead him up quiet to sleep with me. I always knew when he felt too left out of things. Or maybe even it was just when I needed him more than other times. But I always got him out before daylight. He’s a good dog, all I’d ever ask for in one. And I think I know my animals.
“What I’m trying to tell you. That first year, when he was still a pup, Mother took one long look at him and told me. Said, You go to the barns close the door on him. Don’t take him up there with you. Don’t let him in. She didn’t care how much I thought I had him trained or how much attention I’d pay him. Told me, That dog, you let him in the barns, he’ll get in the runs with the birds. It don’t matter what you do or think you’re doing. You open a pen door just that much, he’ll be in there. A dog’s nature, was what she called it. And I did what she said. And he seemed fine with it. I mean, he’d lie outside the barn door, blowing down snow at ten below; he’d just lie there and wait on me. And I thought, Oh he’s a good boy. So one day that next spring after getting him I took him in the barn with me. Thought he’d just follow me or maybe trot up and down the walkway and look at the birds. And I went to change the water in the young birds and just like she said he came right under me through that open door, barking and bouncing, all frenzied. To this day I don’t think he had any idea what to do once he got in there. And of course I set down the waterer and got hold of him and dragged him out of there. Wasn’t but five, maybe ten seconds. But it was enough time for them young birds, eight-week fryers was what they were, to all pile up in a corner on top of each other. Time I got him out of there and got back in to pull the birds apart there was ten or so dead at the bottom of the pile. Just suffocated by the panic. Not a tooth mark on em. And what I did then, I took those dead birds into the horse barn and laid them in a hay manger in an empty stall. And next morning, first light, I slipped out of the house and got a spade and carried them up into the woods and buried them. And I never said one word to anybody. Not anyone. Not that I put it from my mind. I always thought I’d tell it someday. Always thought I’d tell Mother. But Daddy, there just was never that right time. Since when you get right down to it I’m a coward. And now she knows it, knows it and knows I never told her. It’s an awful thing. I feel like I’m found out, all of me. I can’t stand it and don’t know what to do.”
“There’s nothing to do,” he admitted. “You already know the wrong of it, from start to finish.”
“I know that much.” A sheen was on her. “I’ve taken it apart one side to the other and back again. I’m seized up with it, can’t get out of it. I thought telling you might help, but it won’t I guess. It’s just something I’m left to live with. There isn’t ever any absolution, is there, Daddy?”
He wanted to tell her having children of her own would provide that. Instead he said, “If there is, it comes awful slow.
But then, those chickens, we knew about them.”
“You did not.”
“You think Mother would’ve lost birds and not known it?”
She looked away from him now. He took pause, trying to guess what she was looking at. Her own reflection in the windowglass, the lamplight a pliant brass worn down from the rag. He said, “It was fourteen little fryers. That’s a hole even in a bunch. And there hasn’t been a child come or go out of this house odd hours we both didn’t know of it. I didn’t even trouble to look for the grave of them. But there were those feathers in the manger. Not to even talk about how the dog slunk for days, your eyes sharp onto him. Not to mention you slunk some yourself. So. You see.”
She put her chin toward her left shoulder, her eyes still off him. “It doesn’t change my not telling.”
“No.”
“It doesn’t change her dying without my telling.”
“No.”
“It doesn’t change much then.”
He paused hard. Looked at the clock. Bedtime. Bedtime for somebody. The old life. It made no difference. What’s taken for granted is not the same as what’s granted. He tried to imagine himself a year from now. Five years. He imagined himself come to terms with it all. Come to accommodations. He couldn’t do it. And knew it would happen, some way. He thought maybe he was the sort of person who held less and less of themselves, peeled away until there was nothing left. Some husk. The image of an old man out of his head railing before death. Again, he thought, self-pity. He said, “Only for you. Your mother, she knew and forgave you long since.”
“In its way, that makes it worse.”
And through all this had been the red anger lying in his belly waiting to sprout out his tongue. Which he did not know was there until it came. “Each and everyone of us is alone. In the beginning and at the end and everything else in between. Anything else is just pretend. Just a moment here; then, gone. Don’t fool yourself thinking it’s otherwise or even that it should be. Sooner you learn that, the better off you’ll be.”
She gazed at him. “You don’t believe that.” Her eyes wet shining.
He hated himself for it, scarring her with his eyes, enjoying the doing of it. “What about your mother? What thought she put into what she did? Whatever her reasoning was, it lacked all of us. It was all about her, every bit of it.”
Now her eyes changed, taking measure of him. It was an odd thing, had never happened before between them. He was less now to her and gratified for it. She said, “Why, you’re angry at her.”
“Of course I am.”
“And you’re doing the same thing you just accused her of.”
“You’re angry at her too. You’ve reason.”
“No. I’m sad. Terribly sad. Sad so hard my chest hurts, I wake up with it aching. Sad for her being gone and sad she took herself like that. And I can’t tell you where the one lets off and the other begins. And yes I am angry. Not like you though, not at her. I’m angry at whatever it was took her there, led her there, drove her there. Whatever it was left her no choice. I’m not so stupid to think she didn’t consider all of us. Which leaves me, what? Leaves me thinking whatever it was, was a horrible hard thing you know far more about than you’ll let on. So I’m angry at you too. Angry that you won’t tell me about it. Angry that you didn’t do something, anything. Something more than what you did. You were the one with all of us sitting watching her those last months; you were the one might’ve changed things, done something. So. Yes. You’re right. I am angry. But angry at you. My own father, such a coward.”
“Don’t you talk that way to me.”
“Oh I guess I will. Talk anyway I want if there’s truth to it.” And stood there, her head high, chin aimed at him, arms across her chest. Collected, abrupt, launched. “Look at you.” she said, “all wrapped up in your own grief. Or sorrow, regret, remorse. Whatever it is. Like you’re the only one with all that. Oh,” she said, “you make me ashamed of you.”
He sat still. His hands in his lap. A bolt in his chest. He did not take his eyes from her. He said, “Is that all?”
She looked at him, her eyes cornered. “That’s it.”
“You’re done?”
“Yes sir. I said what needed to be said.” Crying now, silent, tears tracking her face. There, he thought, you made her cry. Still believing it had to be done.
“Sit,” he said.
She looked at him but did not move.
“Sit,” he repeated. “I’ll tell you what I know. But it’s not going to be one long clean straight line that starts here and ends there. Even if I knew all of it, it wouldn’t be that way. And there’s more gaps than you might think in what I know. But you want it, I’ll give it to you. After all, you’re right; it’s yours as much or more than mine. If I’d meant to spare you and made that choice wrong I’m sorry. You’ll forgive me. Or not. So sit. I won’t talk to you looming.”
She took a handkerchief from her dress pocket and blew her nose and cleaned her face. Wiped her eyes and cheeks and then her forehead. Not watching him, taking her time. Put the handkerchief away and looked to the mantelpiece clock, as if to make her decision upon something beyond them both. Then stepped eighteen inches and swung around and sat on the sofa, sweeping her dress against the backs of her legs as she went down, landing without effort and leaning forward, her elbows on her knees, her eyes back to him.
“All right,” she said. “Here I am.”
He told her of Sweetboro, of where her mother came from. Not the version she’d grown up with but the version that was his. At least told her what he would of that. Told her what happened to drive her mother north those last months of the war, named the people and told her as much as he knew, as much as he remembered, as much as he fathomed of it all, speaking of emotions flared and those tamped back; attempted to explain the ties of blood both active and violent and those refused, insidious, ignored. And so again attempted witness: to make location vivid and actual, true as could be made with something he knew nothing of but knew as well he felt as his own simple surround of hills and woodlots and livestock. Except that he could not come to any comprehension of her final short journey and so only left that there, in the air between himself and his daughter. Knowing that his telling of the old was enough. Knowing that she’d accept if not understand his failure to know more than he did. And he told it slowly, with great attention and care, backtracking over and over as small details slipped up from memory to skate the surface. Giving almost everything he had of it, not for absolution or mercy or grace or even any forgiveness of his faults or failures but simply to have it out, to have it shared and so owned by someone other than himself. And the only part he would not share, the only fact withheld, that he would not allow her, was the burden that her mother had murdered, that somewhere—not at the beginning, the true beginning, but that which propelled her mother out finally—was this act. Which he would not lay upon the daughter. Saw no gain made by such a burden. And so kept it for himself. When finished he was wet with sweat through his underwear and shirt beneath his arms and looked over his girl’s shoulder where she sat with sunken head and saw by the clock his telling had taken less than twenty minutes. And did not know if that mattered or to what degree. A span of time to hold another span within. And waited some minutes for response until he knew there would not be one, not then, perhaps not ever. And so knew she would rise before she did and watched her cross the room and turn at the door to tell him goodnight, her voice nearly not there. A voice lost of itself. As if, he thought, she did not believe him. As if she sensed something left out. And left him there then, a creature hunkered, hunched and broken upon himself, raw to a flaying, his hands troubled knobbed things helpless and useless in his lap, his spine and feet aching, his mouth dried, bitter, decayed. There was nothing he wanted.
In the kitchen Abigail sat in a robe with her hair bound up in a towel long after the conversation in the next room had ended and her sister had gone back up the stairs. Sat with her hair dried and
knotted within the towel. Sat with the words of her father, not just the story, only parts of which were new to her, but his reaction to it all. His anger of life. As if she’d found a poem of a dozen lines that cast calm over turbulence, that made succinct the indistinct. As if a puzzle had been laid together before her and she was not surprised by the picture made, had even expected the picture, but was surprised by the hands doing the work. And understood those words to be part of a continuum for her own life, an understanding of how things are. Knew the acuteness of her own details were the only measure of herself she’d ever have. If it was a bitter rind, that was fine; she wanted it all.
She waited long enough for her father to have followed her sister upstairs to his own bed if that was what he was after and when he did not go she waited some while longer in a courtesy she’d never before felt or needed to feel for him and then rose and shook out her hair and laid the towel over the rack by the range to finish drying and went to him, went bearing the one tale she had that she’d share with him, the one splice that overlaid their lives. And came into the living room where the lamp had guttered so he lay slumped down sleeping in the armchair in a sooted light, his mouth slack and open, his face collapsed with fatigue, his broken knotted hands resting on the arm grips of the chair as if laid there by someone other than him. And she stood watching him sleep only a short time before she went to the chest behind the sofa and took out a woolen Johnson blanket and spread it over him, slipping it up against his throat and using the edge to wipe the bead of drool from the cleft of his chin. Then she cupped the chimney and blew out the lamp and went up the dark house to her own bed in the room where she kept the floor grate closed year round and the window open to sleep. Some mornings there would be a fine peak of blown snow on the sill or the floor beneath it. This night there was no snow, just the thin starlight of early winter with no moon. She lay on her side with a pillow between her thighs and both arms up under the pillow beneath her head. From here she could see the upper sheep pastures and the hillside woodlot cresting up against the few stars. She lay a long time without sleeping.