Universal Harvester(50)

“For my mom,” she says.

“How do you mean, for your mother,” asks Sarah Jane.

“I wanted her to be able to tell her story,” says Lisa slowly.

“But we don’t even know what her story is.”

“Well, to do her a kindness, I guess.”

“But she can’t really receive that kindness.”

“It’s so she won’t be forgotten,” says Lisa, looking pleadingly into the lens.

“But there’s nothing you can do about that,” Sarah Jane presses. “And besides, Lisa—I don’t really see how any of this helps with any of that. They don’t seem connected. You have to see that.”

“Look, I do it for myself, too, I know that,” says Lisa, casting her gaze out now past the tripod, around it and out to the tall rows of corn on the neighboring property, the pigs in the distance. “I don’t see why you have to make me say it out loud.”

She gets up then, walking past the mounted camera, and there’s an extended quiet during which we can’t see that she’s gone to stand beside the friend she made of the lonely woman from Nevada; the two of them looking out from the porch to the corn, and the brace of sycamores farther down, the wind at play in the leaves.

*

Emily called Ed down to the basement when her gut told her it was time; after they’d all spent a couple of hours watching movies together, they congregated in the living room. This was an unfamiliar scenario for all of them. The Pratts hadn’t ever been the sort of family to hold meetings, to regiment their lives like a business. Still, they all took their places on the couches and cushions, like they’d been doing it all their lives.

Ed spoke first, from his heart: “I don’t really know what to say.” He looked at his children. “Are you both all right?”

By now James had managed to summon up his defenses. “No, Dad, I’m hurt. I watched a lot of movies,” he said.

“I’d appreciate it if you could be serious,” Abby said.

“Thanks, Abby,” said Ed. “I mean it, James. We live in a world now where people see things all the time, all kinds of things, and they think nothing ever leaves a mark on them, but—”

“I’m fine,” said James.

Ed looked at his son, who had fixed his eyes on the floor between his feet. “All right,” he said gently. “Just checking in.”

He looked over at Emily, whose face was sad.

“I wish we hadn’t watched it down in the darkroom,” she said. It was her special place in the world. “It will feel different for a while. But I’m all right. I’m not the one who’s hurt.”

“I’m real glad you guys all feel great,” Abby said, exasperated. “Can we talk about those poor people now?”

“We’ll rescue them, right, Abs?” said James. His recovery was progressing rapidly. “We’ll just head out to the driveway, maybe follow their scent out into the cornfields.”

“You shut up,” said his sister. “That stuff was fucked up. She hit that boy hard enough to leave a bruise on his face. You could see his cheek turning red.” Her voice caught in her throat when she described it; she hadn’t been able to look away.

Ed felt so proud of his daughter; someday she’d stop seeking the high ground all the time, and she’d be happier for it, but it would mean that the child he’d known so long ago was finally gone forever. It gave him such joy to see her putting that moment off for as long as she could.

“Easy, Ab,” he said. She nodded. “There’s nothing we can do right now. Let’s eat something, and maybe try not to think too hard about it just now, and then we’ll think a little more about it tomorrow morning.”

The children slept hard; it had been a very long day. The Pratts had some decaf in the kitchen, and then they, too, turned in for the night. Those shaky visions from the basement weren’t strong enough to crowd out the pleasure of having everybody under the same roof for the first time in well over a year. Was it two years? Retirement time was a new and disorienting rhythm.

“It’s great to see the kids, anyway,” Emily said, nuzzling Ed’s shoulder in the dark.

“I miss them,” said Ed, whispering as if to guard a secret from temperatures in which it wouldn’t survive, from the threat of all that open air.





5

James was at the tiny drop-leaf table in the kitchen the next morning—“You have a breakfast nook!” Abby’d squealed when she spotted it yesterday, her mother trying not to beam with satisfaction—scowling at his open laptop, muttering incredulously to himself as he scrutinized the upper right corner of the screen. “You have to be kidding,” he was saying just as his mother came in.

“You be nice to your parents,” she said. “There’s Internet on the computer upstairs.”

He blinked at her. “Mom, you are the last people in the country who have to plug into the wall to get online.”

“Your parents are older than you are,” she said, lifting her eyebrows pointedly. “You are the last son in the country to come to this conclusion. We’re even.”

He rose from his chair, pulled his phone from his pocket, and held it up, screen side out. “Half a bar!” he said. “I can’t do anything on half a bar! The Vatican is more wired than this place!”