Beneath the Apple Leaves(48)
“Wouldn’t matter. Frank’s done enough to the people around here that we’re all tainted.” Lily’s eyelids lowered and she became very still. “Did Pieter tell you anything else?” Resignation tinged the question, spiked with a scar that threatened to reopen.
Andrew knew what she was asking and he would not open her wound. “No.” He tucked the last sleeping piglet into the straw. “That was all he said.”
She exhaled gratefully and stood to go, wrapping the worn sweater tight at her waist. Andrew rose as well. “I’ll walk you home.”
She shook her head. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to go alone.” Her words softened without any trace of insult. “Been a long day is all.”
“You sure?” He watched her carefully until she grinned under his gaze and turned away bashfully.
“Besides,” she scolded, “you got dark circles under your eyes. Should treat yourself to a good nap before Mrs. Kiser calls you to dinner.” She pushed him lightly in the chest, the touch tingling down to his pelvis. “Give you a chance to dream about digging holes or pretty girls or whatever you men think about.”
“Think I’m too tired to dream.” He walked her to the door and held it open, then closed it gently again right before she was about to walk through. He blocked her way with his body but met her humbly in the space. “I could teach you how to read, Lily,” he offered gently. “If you want me to.”
Her hand fumbled with the top button of her sweater. “I don’t—” Her voice cracked feebly. “I don’t want you to think I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid, Lily.” He said it so firmly that she listened.
“I would like that.” She smiled then, haltingly at first before her lips bloomed. “I’d like that very much.”
Without knowing he was going to do it, Andrew leaned down and kissed her on the forehead. “Good night, Lily girl.”
*
Andrew awoke from his nap on the sofa to babies screaming and Wilhelm shouting from the next room. The sky pitched black through the windows. He could smell dinner cooking.
Andrew walked into the kitchen. The babies screamed in the corner. Screamed. The high shrill pierced the eardrum, one in each ear. Eveline plopped the mashed potatoes on the plates. On Wilhelm’s the starch stuck stubbornly to the spoon, and she pounded on the dish until the food came off in a giant white blob. The boys tried to eat but gave up to hold their ears. The weight of the noise sat like bricks upon the rib cage, pressured the head and temples, reverberated in the walls of the room.
Wilhelm threw down his fork. “For Christ’s sake, can’t you do something?”
“Do something?” Eveline smacked the pot on the counter. “What would you have me do?”
“Feed them. Walk them. I don’t know.” He rubbed his eyebrows. “Just do something!”
Eveline wanted to throw the pot at him. Do something, he says. Feed them, he says. Feed them! Her head was going to explode. The crying made her want to hurt them. She could see herself doing it, throwing them right out the window. She could feel the sensation of tossing them, one baby right after the other, into the dirt and then locking the window. She gripped the counter. Wilhelm simply poked at his stew and she wanted to throw the pot at him. Do something. His words screamed between her ears; the twins screamed within them and all she wanted to do was to scream louder than them all.
Eveline grabbed Wilhelm’s wool coat and flung it over her shoulder. She grabbed the babies and shoved them together in one arm, stepped into her boots.
“What are you doing?” Wilhelm asked.
“Taking care of it!” she shouted, and stormed out of the house, the waning cries of the twins slowly fading away.
Everyone’s ears stung with the sudden and forced silence. Edgar glanced at Andrew, then to his father. “What’s she doing with them?” he asked nervously.
“Nothing you need to worry about.” Wilhelm turned to his food. Stabbed the overcooked beef. “Eat your dinner.”
Before the meal had finished, Eveline returned, coatless. Her face was red with exertion, the hem of her dress stuck with old leaves. No one asked where the babies were. No one asked anything.
She sat at her chair, her plate of food long cold. Her hair strayed from the bun. The divide between husband and wife a jagged fissure, a torn space that everyone sensed and no one would acknowledge. Eveline finally pushed her plate away, left the table and went upstairs, slamming the bedroom door.
Wilhelm stood up. “Clean up the table for your mother,” he directed. The boys picked up their plates and headed to the sink.
Andrew rose from the table and faced his uncle, obstructed his passage. “You can’t leave them out there.”
“Yes, I can.”
The boys turned from the sink, their eyes worried and pleading. With one last scalding look, Andrew grabbed his coat and stormed out of the house. The sky was dark and the newly fallen leaves crunched under his feet. He stomped up the yard, past the apple tree in the direction of the distant cries. The temperature was low, and when the wind blew it forced his neck down into his collar for warmth. He took long, swift strides up the ridge toward the cornfields, the moon only now inching above the curve of the horizon. There was little light, trees and boulders in various shades of gray and black and dark brown—a world in decay.