A Piece of the World(47)
“Yeah. No. I don’t know.” He stands abruptly and goes to the window. “I was almost hit by the same train that killed him, did you know that? At the same intersection, several years ago. I was driving along, thinking about something else, and I looked up and jammed the brakes at the last second and the train went firing past. So I know what it was like for him to see that train bearing down. The horror of it. The futility of realizing there’s nothing you can do.” He hesitates, then adds, “And I’m filled with rage. At—at losing him. Losing him too soon.”
Ah, all right, I think.
“I’m angry at losing him, but I’m also angry at the waste,” he says. “The time wasted, the energy squandered on meaningless possessions, the compromises . . . I don’t want to make the same mistakes.”
I think of the mistakes my own father made toward the end of his life. I know how the death of a parent can be both a release and a reckoning.
“You won’t.”
“I’m about to.”
“Let me make you a cup of tea,” I say.
He shakes his head. “No. I’m going back up. Rage is good for the work. I’ll pour it in. And sorrow, and love, all mixed together.” Standing in the doorway, gripping the frame, he says, “Poor Betsy, it’s not her fault. She wanted a normal life and she got me instead.”
“I think she knew what she was in for.”
“Well, if she didn’t, she does now,” he says.
1917–1922
For the first time in years, the summer days hold more hours than I know what to do with. I order wallpaper from a catalog in the Fales store and enlist Mother’s help in transforming the rooms downstairs. (If this is to be my home, let it at least be papered with small pink flowers on a field of white.) Mother persuades me to join groups I’ve previously disdained—the Friendly Club, the Helpful Women’s Club, the South Cushing Baptist Church sewing circle, with their ice cream socials and apron sales and weekly meetings. I borrow books from the library that Walton didn’t recommend. (Ethan Frome in particular, with its bleak New England winters, its agonizing compromises and tragic mistakes, keeps me up at night.) I take sewing orders for dresses and nightgowns and slips from ladies in town. I even agree to go to the Grange Hall on a Friday night with Ramona and Eloise and my brothers, though when I hear the cheerful piano and fiddle music wafting through the trees as we get closer—“Tiger Rag” and “Lady of the Lake”—I want to vanish into the woods.
As soon as we arrive, everyone disperses. “You poor dear!” Gertrude Gibbons yelps from across the room when she spots me. She rushes over and grabs my hand. “We were all so sorry to hear.”
“I’m fine, Gertrude,” I say, attempting to fend her off.
“Oh, I know you have to say that,” she stage whispers. “You are so brave, Christina.”
“I’m not.”
She squeezes my hand. “You are, you are! After all you’ve been through. I would crawl into a hole.”
“No, you wouldn’t.”
“I would! I would just collapse. You are so . . .” She sticks her lip out in a pretend pout. “You always make the best of things. I admire that so much.”
And just like that, I’ve had enough. I close my eyes, take a breath, open them. “Well, see, now, I admire you.”
She puts a hand on her chest. “Really?”
“Yes. I think it would be hard to have such a slender sister, when you try so desperately to watch your weight. That doesn’t seem fair at all.”
She stands erect. Pulls her stomach in. Bites her lip. “I hardly think—”
“It must be very difficult.” Reaching out, I pat her shoulder. “Everybody says so.”
I know I’m being unkind, but I can’t help myself. And I don’t regret it when I see the hurt look on her face. My heart is shattered, and all that’s left are jagged shards.
MOTHER HAS BEGUN spending entire days in her bedroom with the shades drawn. Dr. Heald comes and goes, trying to figure out what is wrong. I hover in the shadows out of his way. “It appears that she has a progressive kidney disease and possibly a heart condition,” he tells us finally. “She needs to rest. When she feels up to it, she can venture out into the sunshine.”
She has good days and bad. On bad days, she doesn’t come out of her room. (When she calls for tea, I make my way up the stairs slowly, rattling the teacup in its saucer, splashing the hot liquid on my hand.) On good days, she appears after I’ve finished washing the breakfast dishes and sits with me in the kitchen. Now and then, when she’s feeling particularly well, we’ll take a picnic to Little Island, timing our walks to the ebb of the tide. We are quite a pair: a sickly woman short of breath and a lame girl lurching alongside.
Mother keeps Mamey’s black bible, worn and faded from years of travel, on the table beside her bed, and often thumbs through its gossamer pages. Now and then she murmurs the words aloud she knows by heart: We rejoice in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope . . . For this light momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison . . .
One morning I come to the barn to bring Papa a jug of water and find him slumped against the mule in its stall, a strange grimace on his face. Startled, I drop the cup and stumble forward.