Pew(27)

I nodded and followed him away from the house, down the sidewalk, toward a shadowy cluster of pines at the end of the block. We were silent as we went. Several times I thought Mr. Kercher was about to say something, but he gave up before a word came.
The pines were narrow and sparse. A path had been patted down between them. Every few paces, there was a stone on which someone had painted little white arrows to guide the way.
Hello, Mr. Kercher said, stooping to pet a pile of green moss. He looked at the moss the way I’d seen people look at children or babies sleeping in strollers, soft bodies someone larger had to protect. Goodbye, he said just as quietly and seriously as before. He stood again and we kept walking.
Where I am from, we have many woods, many hikers. Here, not so many—people go to church instead. So we must let the forest know we appreciate it.
We kept walking, slowly, each step soft. A few feet off the path a dark bird was bathing in a puddle. She turned her beak toward Mr. Kercher as we passed, chirped, then flew deeper into the woods. We climbed a slight hill, and when we reached the top, the light shifted, made the world more stark and clear. There was a log on its side and Mr. Kercher sat, so I sat next to him and we listened to a creek below us, listened to the water pass over the stones and the stones be washed with water. A wind came and went.
In our silence I felt as if something had been given back to me that I’d lost a long time ago. Mr. Kercher did not look at me and I did not look at him. There was no need.
I feel … confused all the time, Mr. Kercher said eventually. My daughter, Ava, says it is because I am getting old. I know I am getting old. It may be the only natural form of justice. Maybe. But I do not think my confusion has to do with aging.
I moved here because I love my daughter and she is all I have left. She got married. They have three children. He is—his whole family is from here. It seems his family, the Hindmans, has some special … distinction in the town. They are—they have been kind to me, but I do not understand this reverence. I fear it is only because they are wealthy. I’ve seen people line up to talk to one of them, and there are special tables at restaurants, lots of invitations to things. The Hindmans are on all these boards, these groups of people who make decisions about other people. Perhaps there is something I do not know about them, but I have been here for many years and … well … I don’t want to speak ill of them. The Hindmans have been perfectly nice to me. Or at least they have not been rude. And Ava chose to join this family, to become a Hindman, so I must respect her choice. Everyone has their own life, their own decisions, and anyway, so much is outside our control—the circumstances of our deaths and births, that is, and the various circumstances that pass between those times—
As I listened to Mr. Kercher, I was visited by a memory or the memory of an old dream—of an autumn afternoon when I was sitting on a bench in a town square somewhere. One of the storefronts nearby had several white gowns in the window, sequined and lacy and draped on headless mannequins, and the square was quiet, no sounds but a far-off church bell or a clock chime, until a young woman ran out of that store, the door bursting open and several other women pursuing her. The young woman was wearing a loose pale blue slip and screaming and weeping—I hate this, I won’t, I won’t—and the other women in their woolen dresses and thick stockings and sweaters buttoned high tried to crowd around her. You’ll catch a cold, one of them said, come back inside. The young woman, barefoot, tried to escape the hands of the women but she could not. It’s the worst thing that can happen to a person, she said, the very worst thing! But the women around her said, Nonsense and Calm yourself and Dear, my dear, please come back inside now, please come back inside. And eventually she did, still weeping, retreat into the store.
I thought of telling Mr. Kercher this story but I didn’t know if I had seen or imagined or dreamed it. No, there was no use in saying it. I set that image back down in me.
I wouldn’t have come to this place if my daughter hadn’t been here, Mr. Kercher said, but I’ve found a way to make a life here that is acceptable. These woods are here. There is a lake a short drive away, also. I go there. Much of the day, I am reading books.
Mr. Kercher began to cry without making a sound, but after a moment he seemed to fold up this cry and put it away like a handkerchief. He smiled with soft confusion at the ground.
For many years I have tried, but it is difficult for me to make peace with her joining the Hindmans’ church—though of course she would. She married him. But she was never religious before. In school she studied philosophy and came home for the holidays each year just—bursting. She wanted to talk about everything, reason through everything. She would have me read all the books she had in this class or that one. She shared all her papers. She was always carving away at this thing that belonged to her—her way of thinking, her beliefs … Ava.
Then—I don’t know exactly when … maybe it wasn’t until she’d been at this church here for some time or perhaps it happened sooner and I didn’t realize—the Ava who wanted to know everything was gone. She stopped reading like she had. We didn’t speak about it, and I didn’t want to challenge her new life. She’d chosen this young man, moved here for him, joined this church, began having the children, doing all the work at home to take care of them … Of course I respect that. She was our only child, so it was somewhat natural for her to want to have many children of her own—perhaps to correct the mistakes she saw her parents making, the solitude of her childhood. And perhaps, I’ve thought, this is a way for her to be with her mother again, to become a mother in order to remember her mother …