Pew(21)

Of course—Mrs. Gladstone, Paulina—she’s clearly never been the same and bless her heart she’s all self-conscious about that glass eye. Won’t hardly ever go out. I try to include her, you know, in my life. I don’t want her to be so abandoned but she won’t even leave her house, ever—just won’t leave, and I can hardly set a foot in there.
And when she woke up in the hospital she thought her husband—my father—she was so sure that he was the one who was dead, and no matter what we told her, no matter how many times we explained that he was alive, that he had attacked her, she just didn’t believe it. She thinks it was her fault she lost that eye, and she kept saying, No, my Charles wouldn’t do something like that. It must have been some strange man, some strange man that came in, then blamed it on Charlie. I told her, no, it wasn’t some strange man, that Charles had even admitted himself that he’d done it. And she just kept saying that if it was really him, then she must have done something to deserve it. Can you imagine?
I remembered Paulina, Mrs. Gladstone, sitting quietly in her house, still and alone. The human mind is so easily bent, and so uneasily smoothed.
I was the one who found her, Hilda said. She’d staggered out onto her front porch, gushing blood, and thank God I drove by when I did or she would have died right there on her lawn, and then what would we have done? Wouldn’t have been anything to do then but move away or something …
On the highway ahead of us you could see the heat rising, warping the air. Hilda unwrapped two sticks of chewing gum, put them in her mouth, and chewed as she spoke.
All I am saying is that I know a thing or two about going through something difficult. That’s all I’m saying. So maybe there’s something you don’t want to talk about, but you’ve got to talk about it. That’s the only way things get better. It’s the only way. You could at least think about what it might be like for us, for our community. We don’t know what to do, and there you are showing up in the middle of the festival week plus all this confusion going on over in Almose County. It’s an especially difficult moment and we need you to cooperate. Do you understand?
Hilda stopped and turned off the car in the driveway beside Roger’s house, but she didn’t open her door so I didn’t open mine and we sat there for awhile. A few times Hilda began to speak, got two or three words out before stopping, then starting again. She kept looking straight ahead out the windshield, so I did, too.
Roger is going to take you over to visit a friend of his for the day, and I need to talk to Steven about whether you can keep staying with us. He may think and I might think that it’s just too much for us, for the family, the boys. And it is—well …
She started to open her door but stopped and shut it again, turning to me, her face softer and voice brightened and high.
But I just want you to know that you really are welcome in our house—you’re welcome there and I really do mean that. I don’t have any problem with you, exactly, and I really do want the best for you and you must know that if we can’t have you stay with us anymore that it isn’t a personal decision—it’s a practical one. And I mean it, you really are welcome in my home at any time in the future, and you have been welcome all this time and I want you to know that. It’s just I’ll have to see what Steven says is the most practical. After today and everything. I just have to see what he thinks.
She nodded to her own faint reflection in the windshield.



MOST PEOPLE AROUND HERE are not fond of strangers, you know. I probably don’t need to tell you.
Tammy was smoking a thin cigarette, ashing into an empty soda can. The house was wooden and old, all its planks buckling and splintered, pale blue paint chipping. Through the neglect, it was clear this place had been cared for in other ways. Roger had left me there an hour before, saying only that he would be back later.
No, she said, taking a long drag on the thin cigarette, I probably don’t need to tell you that at all.
She and I sat together on the porch, listening. Every half hour or so a train roared down the train tracks behind the house, a wall of metal noise, suddenly there and large, then fading, then gone. Sometimes I watched her cigarettes disappear into breath, but most of the time I just stared at the yard overtaken by tangled vines and dead leaves. Some cats were in there, rustling round, trying to kill anything they could.
You know—I would have never thought I’d be one of those wives who waited all afternoon for her husband to get back from work, but maybe it’s true that you just turn into your mother—whether you notice or not, you ain’t got a choice.
She smiled at this, shook her head, then dropped her cigarette into the soda can. It hissed in the can’s wet.
Bless her. The bitch. I shouldn’t speak ill of the dead, I know, but … well, people shouldn’t speak ill of their own children either. I suppose I—well, I guess I disappointed her too much and she didn’t live long enough to burn off all that disappointment.
A tabby came up the porch steps with a corpse swaying from his mouth, but Tammy laid a firm look on him; he paused midstep, retreated slowly, then bolted back into the yard’s overgrowth.
Did you have parents or just some people who thought they should own somebody?
Neither, I said. The word took me by surprise, came out abrupt and soft.
Huh. Orphan?
I didn’t say anything for a while, looked at the wooden floor, felt a memory lingering in me somewhere, like someone uncertain at a front door, hesitating at the bell. I don’t remember.