Here on Earth (20 page)

“No,” she said, and then she’d turned her back on him.
You’re my boyfriend,
is what she was thinking, and after all this time, she’s thinking it still.

When the fox disappears, March turns onto Route 22 and heads for Guardian Farm, hoping that Hollis will be back from Boston. The autumn light is sharp, and March reaches for her sunglasses. She switches on the radio and sings along to a song she didn’t think she knew the words to. She has the sense that she’s driving backward in time; the sky is so much smaller here than it is out west, a bowl of heaven set above their pastures and their town. She eases into the turn off Route 22 carefully, since it’s a place where it’s difficult to see oncoming traffic. She drives along the fields the Coopers always planted, but which are now thick with little more than wild clematis and witch hazel. There’s only one tended patch, where Hank has been raising pumpkins, and that crop has done well. There are several rows of huge, fat pumpkins, still on their thick, ropy vines.

March remembers coming here with Hollis and wishing the Farm belonged to them. The house looked so much grander and more elegant back then, and Annabeth Cooper’s perennial gardens were amazing, especially her rose garden, where the blooms were as big as cabbages. March used to study Richard and Belinda with real interest. How strange it was that a rich girl would wear torn sweaters and keep her hair bunched into a rubber band. How odd that Richard should cry when he discovered a worthless old crow someone had shot for sport. She found them so curious, like creatures from a distant planet; she couldn’t help but be interested, and she stayed interested long after Hollis grew tired of their spying game.

It’s Hollis she spies now, out by his truck, back from Boston, where he’s met with one of his lawyers concerning an acquisition of more condos in Orlando. The dogs are milling around, and every once in a while he calls to them harshly, when one nips another, or when they all begin to bark, an off-key plaintive sound that carries over the hill. Still, Hollis is in a better mood than usual; he always gets this way when he buys something. For a brief time at least, he’s not concerned with getting more.
There’s enough for everyone,
Judith Dale always told him when he sat down at the dinner table, but anyone could tell he didn’t believe her.

Hollis is wearing a gray suit made in Italy which cost more than any single item of clothing anyone in this town has ever owned. He’s learned that people are foolish enough to believe what they see, so he dressed rich for his trip into Boston. He’s up in the cab of the truck, in spite of his expensive suit, when March drives in. The dogs start howling and begin to circle the Toyota. In the front seat, Sister hops up to look out the window; seeing those yapping red dogs, the terrier goes berserk. If March let Sister out of the car now, it would attack the entire pack, for all the good that would do.

“Call off your hounds,” March says when she gets. out of the car.

“Kick them,” Hollis suggests as he lifts a box out of the truck. He’s gotten a new computer in Boston so he can hook up directly to his bank. He can sit at the desk in the parlor, where old Mr. Cooper smoked his cigars, and manage his finances beside a window which overlooks one of the prettiest views of his property.

March follows Hollis into the house. Just being this close to him makes her feel all jangly, as if someone has shaken her like a globe filled with snow. She can feel his energy snapping at her, charging her up, even when his attention is turned to this computer in a box.

“I’ll be right back,” he tells her. “Make yourself comfortable.”

March hasn’t been inside this house for a long time, and now that she is, she’s certainly not comfortable. If anything, she’s disoriented. This isn’t the way she remembers the Coopers’ kitchen, with its polished copper sinks and the long oak table that was always piled high with wonderful things to eat. The Coopers hired an Italian cook they called Antsy, so named because she couldn’t stay still for a minute, unless she was baking something delicious. There was a housekeeper as well, a woman from the village, the mother of one of the girls from school; Alison Hartwig was the girl’s name, a quiet blue-eyed girl who didn’t have much to say.

The kitchen now has a spartan quality; that which isn’t a necessity isn’t here. Tiles that had to be ripped up when some pipes burst one terribly cold winter have never been replaced. The slate countertops are cloudy from years of thoughtless cleaning with Comet. The copper sinks have turned the color of moldy leaves. And yet the kitchen is clean. There are two coffee cups, rinsed and drying on a wooden rack; there’s not a crumb on any of the counters, not a dish left out on the table.

When Hollis comes back, he goes to the sink to get himself some cool water. After he’s drained the glass, he comes to stand beside March. He takes her hand and examines it.

“She used to wear this on her left hand,” he says of Judith’s emerald. “Like a wedding ring.”

March leans in close to kiss him, but Hollis takes a step back.

“What?” March asks.

He takes her other hand, her left hand, on which she wears her wedding ring. “If you were the one who’d gone away, I would have waited. No matter how long it took.”

“Well, I did until I just couldn’t anymore,” March says, trying to pull away.

“Wouldn’t,” Hollis says back.

March laughs. He used to do this to her all the time, contradict her however he could, just to get his way. Then she sees. It’s no laughing matter. He’s not letting go of her hand.

There is no measuring love, other than all or nothing or that space in between. This is all, she sees that in him. This is more than everything. Could she live without this, what he’s offering to her? Could she turn away and settle for anything less? Another man would say,
I can’t tell you what to do or what to believe.
Another man would play this as though it were a game.

“Want to know what I think?” he says to March.

She raises her chin and looks at him, even though she’s afraid to find out. He seems extremely pleased with himself, as if he’d figured the answer to a difficult riddle.

“I think you were never married to him.”

“Oh, really?” She tries to sound amused, but that’s not how she’s feeling. She’s feeling as though she can’t stop looking at him: she can’t even try.

“Really,” he says.

The white shirt he’s wearing looks crisp and well pressed, but it turns out the fabric is smooth to the touch, a delicate linen that feels like silk. Hollis kisses her so deeply that her stomach lurches; if she ever had any willpower, it gives way. He’s got his arms around her, so that she has her back against the sink. She can feel the cold copper against her back. Hollis pulls down the zipper of her jeans. He’s calling her baby, he’s telling her it’s always been this way between them and it always will be. No one could ever love her the way he does, not in this lifetime, not in this world.

“Come on,” Hollis says, when he’s got her jeans and her underpants pulled down, as if she planned to stop him. As if she could stop herself. She knows she should tell him to wait. He has Hank living with him; how can they be sure the boy isn’t already home from school? It’s a bright afternoon, anyone could turn up at the door. Ken Helm with a check for the wood he’s culled from land Hollis owns. Harriet Laughton collecting for the library fund.

But March doesn’t tell him no. How could she? She wants him more at this moment than she’s ever wanted anything: air or memory, life or breath. She wraps her legs around him, with her back pressed into that cold copper sink. She wants him to do whatever pleases him; she wants him to do it all. She’s so hot that the copper behind her is growing warm to the touch; soon the metal will ping with heat, ready to burn. The way he thrusts himself inside her is incredibly greedy, but she’s greedy too. That’s the secret Hollis knows about her. She’s no different than he is.

“You want it, don’t you?” is what she thinks he’s whispering to her, or maybe she’s only admitting this fact to herself.

He’s making love to her in a way he never did before; he’s hungrier, more impassioned. March moves her hand beneath the fabric of his shirt. It’s still him, that same boy. There is his heart, right in her hand. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Let them say what they wish; let them gossip. She places both hands on the sink. palms down, to support her weight while he fucks her like this, as if the world were about to end, as if he could never get enough. The metal sink is pressing against her, cutting into her skin, so that later she will have little indentations in her flesh, and blisters, as though she’s been burned.

He has his face against her neck, and she can feel all that heat inside him. She hears him say her name in a strange, garbled way, and then she’s gone. She’s shattered into pure energy; she’s been absorbed into whatever he is, that sulfur, that heat. There is no way to measure this; no scale will do. March finds that she’s crying; the heat that has owned her rises to form a single sob as she arches her head back and wraps herself around him, tighter still.

Outside, there is plenty of sunlight. Not a cloud in the sky. The dogs mill around the back door and whimper. No leaves fall from the maple trees beyond the driveway. No birds fly overhead. And even later, when the blue dusk begins to cross the horizon, it will still be a rare and nearly perfect day. Poor Sister, locked in the car for so long, barking for hours, will yelp hoarsely when March finally comes out of the house. The dog will eye March resentfully as they start down the driveway, then turn onto the back road. Halfway home, March will stop beside a stone wall where the bee balm still grows. She’ll remove her wedding band to find a white circle ; to hide that mark, she’ll switch the emerald onto her left hand, and although she’d meant to rush home and start supper, she’ll stay beside the wall for longer than she’d intended, until the road ahead is completely dark.

T
onight, Gwen will wear all black, but she certainly doesn’t plan any tricks, only a treat. She has a present for Hank, which she hopes to give him at Chris’s Halloween party. Hank is such a serious person, finding the right gift for him is no easy task. No CDs or tapes, no jewelry or flashy clothes. None of that would do. Instead, Gwen has brought along a sterling silver compass she discovered in the attic. It’s an old-fashioned piece, and Gwen hopes it still shows true north.

She wants to be with Hank tonight. She has been with so many boys she never gave a damn about; selfish, spoiled guys who liked to joke about the girls they fucked, rating each on a score of one to ten. Subzero, they laughingly called those whom, like her friend Minnie, they deemed too unattractive to bother with. And to think, Gwen actually put up with that. She stood there and listened to them tear her best friend apart and she pretended that she didn’t hear or didn’t care.

With Hank, it’s different. It’s real. And that’s why she’s nervous: This time, it matters.

“You look terrific,” March says when Gwen comes downstairs, ready for the party.

Gwen is wearing her short black dress, but she’s gone easy on the mascara and eyeliner. Instead of spiking up her hair, she’s let it dry naturally, and it has a soft, pretty shape. She’s desperate for Hank to think she looks good, but she still can’t take a compliment and merely shrugs at her mother’s approval.

“We’re already late,” Gwen says, ducking March’s embrace when she tries to give Gwen a hug. Impatient, Gwen gets her own jacket and her mother’s coat from the closet.

“You may not care if you keep your date waiting,” Gwen informs her mother as they finally head for the car. “But I do.”

It’s the sort of chilly, spooky night when it’s possible to see one’s own breath in the air; perfect for Halloween.

“My date?” March says, rattled by the notion that Gwen may know more than March gives her credit for.

Gwen glares at her mother, then gets into the Toyota, which March has just bought outright from Ken Helm for six hundred dollars, borrowing the money from Hollis. Gwen slams her door to make her point. She really has had enough: she’s been carrying her resentment around for some time and, like it or not, it’s a heavy load.

“Are you talking about Susie?” March asks when she slides behind the wheel. She isn’t ready to discuss Hollis with Gwen; it’s not time, and it may never be.
I can’t turn him down, I can’t say no to him, I want him all the time, I always have and I always will. Is that what she’s supposed
to say to her daughter? Is that the comforting tale she should tell?

“That’s who you’re meeting tonight?” Gwen asks, her voice even more hoarse than usual. “Susie?”

March takes too long to answer. Gwen snorts and looks out into the night.

“Just like I thought,” Gwen fumes. “The truth really is an alien language to you.”

“Okay,” March says. “You want the truth? I’m meeting Hollis.” She starts the car and pulls onto the dirt road at a speed that’s too fast for the turn.

“Like I didn’t know,” Gwen mutters under her breath.

“It’s no big deal,” March insists. “We’ve known each other forever. We grew up together.”

Gwen is feeling something weird in her throat. She can’t stand for this to happen to her father, who is the nicest man she knows. All right, he’s not the most conversational guy in the world unless you’re talking about beetles. There have been family dinners when no one has said a word during the entire meal. But Gwen has been in the car with her father when he’s stopped to watch a wood spider spin its web. She’s seen him talk to a stray bear cub, when they were at Yosemite for her tenth birthday, and to this day, she would swear the bear listened.

Gwen knows that her father has been sending March cards. She found one this morning. A store-bought card that said
Thinking of you.
“I miss you every day,” he had written and Gwen actually cried to see that he’d been made to embarrass himself. A man like her father, so settled in silence, had to come out and shout what he felt, and her mother still didn’t seem to care.