Perfect Little World(12)
She did not cry because she knew how embarrassed Mr. Tannehill would be to witness it. He had done her the kindness of this conversation, of his support for her desires, and she would not ask for more than that.
Having told another person, the burden of secrecy lightened by even an ounce, she could allow herself the expectation, however unsupportable, of a happy future. It made her, for the first time in weeks, ravenous. It made her want to eat the entire world and let whatever nutrients it held seep into her child. “I’m hungry,” she said.
“Only thing here is barbecue,” he said.
“I’ll eat it,” she said, staring down whatever made her sick.
They stood and walked to the back entrance of the restaurant. Mr. Tannehill made her sit at the card table while he heaped a plate with barbecue and topped it with two slices of white bread. He placed it in front of her and she asked him for the East Carolina–style barbecue sauce that no one in Coalfield seemed to prefer. Mr. Tannehill brought her a Styrofoam cup of the sauce and she built herself a disgusting sandwich, the bread soaked through with vinegar, and took such a large bite that it demolished what was left in her hands. She chewed and chewed, finally swallowing, and when she looked up from her plate, Mr. Tannehill was sitting across from her, smiling. “Eating for two now,” he said.
“How many times do you think I’ll have to hear that?” she asked him.
“More times than you want, I guarantee you that. Unwed pregnant girl, folks don’t know how to talk to her in anything other than bland platitudes.”
“This is gonna be hard,” she said, not wanting reassurance, simply reminding herself of what she was getting herself into.
“You’re tough,” he said, and then he pushed away from the table and busied himself with wood and smoke.
She ate and ate and, only minutes after she had finished, she fell asleep at the table, listening to the faint sounds of Mr. Tannehill shuffling around the smoker, tending the fire, keeping all things in order.
chapter three
Dr. Preston Grind stood in an unfamiliar forest, the buzzing of the natural world competing with the distant sound of construction that had intruded upon this space, which was to be Dr. Grind’s new home for the foreseeable future. He carried his duffel bag over his shoulder, which held three identical outfits, a pair of sneakers, and a dopp kit, and he lugged a tote bag in his other hand, which held a laptop, a tablet, and three notepads. Holding the bags, it seemed like too much and too little at the same time, that for such an endeavor, he should either have nothing but the clothes on his back or one hundred steamer trunks packed with all sorts of unnecessary items.
At various times since he’d embarked on this new project, he felt like he was a pioneer, setting off into an unknown landscape that would either swallow him whole or come to bear his own name. Other times he felt like an astronaut about to board an experimental rocket ship to explore a galaxy that was only theoretically known to exist. And other times, when his loneliness and depression threatened to derail all the therapy and positive thinking, he felt like he was simply embarking on a project doomed to failure, an error in judgment so profound that it would send him so far underground that no one would ever see him again.
There were times when Preston realized that if he were to take the emotions and anxieties that were inside him and place them next to the exterior calm of his actual body, it would be terrifying to behold. That he could hold the two aspects separate from each other, or at least make them work together, was a testament to his abilities, though he worried that they would become combustible next to each other and simply vaporize, leaving him nothing.
But now, having driven along the East Coast for the past three days, he simply felt like a man who was going to try something difficult and hope that it worked, which made him no different from most of the other inhabitants of this planet. It gave him the slightest amount of strength, to believe that he was both special and no different from anyone else, and he walked the last mile down the dirt road that had been dug out of the forest and happened upon the place where he would build his new family.
The structure was awe inspiring, the way it so clearly asserted itself within the acres of woods that surrounded it. The front of the structure was a three-story building, all windows, a garden on the roof, while the rest of the buildings, all irregular heights and dimensions, were connected in a rectangular shape, a planned community, which is what it was intended to be. What made it so striking was that every exposed part of these concrete structures was covered in a specially designed olive green AstroTurf. It made the buildings seem both futuristic and camouflaged. The design had come from an architectural firm in Spain, shocked that anyone was interested in such a strange layout, but to Dr. Grind it had been perfect. It was enclosed, private, but with enough open spaces that it suggested the freedom to move around the complex without fear. The children, Dr. Grind knew from experience, would love it; the parents, well, they might take some convincing.
The foreman on the project met Dr. Grind at the front of the building and invited him to tour the grounds. There was only a skeleton crew left on-site to handle a few odds and ends with wiring, though the interiors of the buildings would have to be installed and furnished at a later date, but there was time enough for that. As he walked around and around the interior of the courtyard, he couldn’t help brushing his fingertips against the AstroTurf, the way it transformed the primitive concrete walls into something that a child might dream up, all dangerous things made soft with care. He walked through every room and imagined its future use, the dreaming made easier by the absence of any real detail to impede his wishes. He stayed out of the way of the workers whenever they stepped into a room in which he was standing. By the end of the day, the light golden through the trees, fading into a dimness, the foreman asked if he needed a ride back to his car in the makeshift parking lot at the entrance of the woods, but Dr. Grind declined. He said he would like to walk around a bit more, and though the foreman hesitated, he seemed to understand that Dr. Grind was important enough that he was allowed to do whatever he desired, this being his building. Once the men had left and Dr. Grind could hear them starting up their trucks, he walked up to the third floor of the main building, each floor as large as an auditorium. He found a ladder that had been set on its side and he set it upright and leaned it against one of the concrete walls. He climbed to the top of the ladder, his hand able to touch the space where the wall met the ceiling. Steadying himself, he reached for his wallet and produced a small photo of his wife and child. In the photo, his wife, Marla, was holding on to their son’s arms, spinning him around in a circle. Jody, his son, was a blur of motion, his face ghostlike and hazy, but he remembered when the photo was taken, and he knew his son was smiling, beaming with delight. He took the photo of his family, both of them now dead and gone, and he slid it into a slight, almost nonexistent space between the wall and the ceiling. He pushed the photo into the crack, little by little, until it disappeared into the structure. Though he did not believe in an afterlife, he hoped some aspect of them would filter into whatever it was he was trying to accomplish with this endeavor. He hoped, was it not too much to ask, that they would never leave him.