A Piece of the World(45)

“You don’t need to do that, Al.”

“Wouldn’t want anything to happen. Couldn’t forgive myself if it did.”

The weight of sorrow presses on my chest. I grip the shell, feeling its blunt knobs. Then I let it slip from my fingers. It makes a small splash.

“What was that?”

“Nothing important.”

The shell sinks quickly. I’ll never have to look at it again, or hold it in my hand.





WHAT PROMISES I MAKE





1946


Hel-loo? Christina?” A woman’s artificially high voice comes through the screen.

“In here,” I say. “Who is it?”

The woman pulls open the door and steps into the kitchen like she’s stepping onto a sinking ship. She’s of indeterminate middle age, wearing a worsted wool suit and stockings and pumps and carrying a casserole. “I’m Violet Evans. From the Cushing Baptist Church? We have a hospitality club, and—well—we’ve put you on our list for a stop-in visit once a week.”

My back stiffens. “I don’t know about any list.”

She smiles with aggrieved patience. “Well, there is one.”

“What for?”

“Shut-ins, mostly.”

“I’m not a shut-in.”

“Umm-hmm,” she says, glancing around. She holds up the dish. “Well. I brought you chipped beef and noodles.” She squints into the gloom. It’s late afternoon, and I haven’t lit a lamp yet. Until she came inside, I hadn’t really noticed how dark it is in here. “Maybe we could switch on a light?”

“No electricity. I’ll find a lamp if you’ll wait a moment.”

“Oh—don’t go to any bother for me. I won’t stay long.” She steps gingerly across the floor and sets the casserole on top of the range. “I spilled a little on my skirt, I’m afraid. Can you point me toward your sink?”

Reluctantly I direct her to the pantry. I know what’s coming.

“Why, this is—a pump!” she says with a little surprised laugh, just as I knew she would. “My heavens, you don’t have indoor plumbing?”

Obviously we don’t. “We’ve always managed fine without it.”

“Well,” she says again. She stands in the middle of the floor like a deer poised to bolt. “I hope you and your brother like chipped beef.”

“I’m sure he’ll eat it.”

I know she expects me to act more appreciative. But I didn’t ask for this casserole, and I don’t particularly care for chipped beef. I don’t like her haughty manner, as if she’s afraid she’ll catch a disease by sitting in a chair. And something in my nature bridles at the expectation that I must be grateful for charity I didn’t ask for. Perhaps because it tends to be accompanied by a kind of condescending judgment, a sense that the giver believes I’ve brought my condition—a condition I’m not complaining about, mind you—on myself.

Even Betsy, who understands me, is always wanting to improve my lot. She washes the dishes with her delicate hands and puts the crockery back in the wrong places. I find the broom behind the door and the dishrag drying on the back stoop. One day she showed up with a pile of blankets and sheets and plunked them on the table in the dining room. “Let me take those old rags you sleep on,” she said. “I think it’s time you had some fresh linens, don’t you?” (Everyone knows I’m proud. Betsy’s the only one I’ll tolerate speaking to me like this.) She gathered up my bedcovers—which, it’s true, had seen better days, especially the threadbare blue blanket Papa knitted—and hauled them outside, tossing them in the back of the station wagon to take to the dump.

“Don’t worry about the Pyrex,” the woman from the Baptist church assures me. “I’ll collect it next week.”

“You don’t need to keep doing this. Really. We get along just fine.”

She leans over and pats my hand. “We’re glad to help, Christina. It’s part of our mission.”

I know this woman from the Baptist church means well, and I also know she’ll sleep well tonight, believing she’s done her Christian duty. But eating her chipped beef and noodles will leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

MOST SUMMER DAYS, around midmorning, when heat thickens over the fields like a gelatin, Andy is at the door. There’s a new intensity to his demeanor; his son Nicky is almost three years old and Betsy is pregnant again, due in a month. Andy needs, he says, to produce some work that will support his growing family.

Sketch pad, paint-smeared fingers, eggs in his pocket. He kicks his boots off and roams around the house and fields in his bare feet. Makes his way to the second floor and moves from one bedroom to another, trudges up another flight to a long-closed room. I can hear him opening windows on the third floor that haven’t been cracked in years, grunting at the effort.

I think of his presence up there as a paperweight holding down this wispy old house, pinning it to the field so it doesn’t blow away.

Andy doesn’t usually bring anything, or offer to help. He doesn’t register alarm at the way we live. He doesn’t see us as a project that needs fixing. He doesn’t perch on a chair, or linger in a doorway, with the air of someone who wants to leave, who’s already halfway out the door. He just settles in and observes.