A Map of the World (35 page)

We spent that Saturday at the pond. I sat in the shade with a hat pulled over my eyes while the girls paddled around in their life jackets. We had not gone down the lane since Lizzy’s death. It was hot, always hot, and everywhere we sat or stood felt like a blistering sidewalk. “Can’t we at least swim?” Emma had pleaded. Swimming or not swimming wasn’t going to bring Lizzy back, I said to myself. The girls had stood on the bank looking out to the water, remembering, I think, that the pond was dangerous. Gradually they let the small waves lure them to the edge. It wasn’t long before they forgot Lizzy had been taken there.

I didn’t recall until the next day that there would be no one to leave the girls with for my Sunday visit to the jail. I had promised Alice I would never bring them along with me. I thought for less than a second of calling Miss Bowman. I stood by the phone in the kitchen for quite some time, putting my hand down on the phone, taking it off again. It seemed reasonable to call Theresa until I was touching the receiver. Just pick it up, I said to myself. No, I responded. I can’t. I paced back and forth across the kitchen. I had promised Alice I would never bring the children to visit. But first, I argued, there was no one who would take the girls. I would tell Alice that Theresa was regrettably busy, or away. I would tell her that they had stayed with Miss Bowman in June and then she would understand my difficulties. Second, it was true that after well over a month on my own I knew our situation better even than Alice. Emma and Claire needed to see her, to know that she was still herself. She always asked so urgently about them. She had a hunger for them, strong enough, it seemed, to propel her through the Plexiglas. She needed to see them too. I didn’t come near to admitting to myself that the girls would serve a purpose, that they would deflect attention. They would shield me from Alice’s keen eyes. That Sunday morning I convinced myself that what she wanted all along was to see Emma and Claire through the filthy window. It would perk her up to hear their voices through the static of the phone line.

Over one of the many bowls of cold cereal we ate in Alice’s absence I said, “Let’s take a drive this afternoon. Let’s take baths and put on clean clothes and go cheer Mom up.”

Emma was about to take a bite but she lowered her spoon, set it back into her bowl. “You mean we can visit her?”

“We can visit her,” I answered.

“You mean we’re allowed?”

“It’s not a nice place, Emma,” I said. “I think you already know that. You remember we won’t be able to be in the same room with her. There’s glass in between. But I think it would make Mom h-happy, to see you.”

We bathed. They dug in their closets and found clean sundresses. Although Alice would not be in a position to inspect their ears, I gouged the wax out all the same. Theresa had given them haircuts recently so they did not look like street children. Claire wriggled with excitement. Emma bounced on the bed. I tried to clip their nails but they couldn’t keep still. When I let them go they ran out the door. They went skipping in the dry grass, running back and forth, shouting in a singsong chant, “We’re going to see Mama, we’re going to see Mama.” For the second time that morning I knelt to retch.

At the jail the girls clung to me as we passed through the metal detector. They were terrified by the doors buzzing and the crush of the visitors in the narrow corridor. We sat on the stool at the second station, waiting for Alice to emerge. I had never had to wait much before, but that afternoon there was a delay. We sat, waiting, thinking she was going to come through on her side any minute. No one was let out. The girls were fighting over how they were sitting on my lap. Claire insisted that Emma had more of my body than she did. I spread my legs and put one child on each, so that the territories were clearly fair. Once that was straightened out they began to argue over who was going to talk first. Emma lay out an elaborate plan. Each of us were to have three minutes, then two minutes, and then one minute. We’d start the cycle over and over, until our time was up. Emma, just because, was going to begin. When they began swatting each other I sent them to look through the large glass window at our backs, at what I believe is called “the communication room.” There are several computers, switchboards with blinking lights, and two deputies wearing headsets.

Alice was the second out. She wasn’t to her station when she saw them. I stood up, both trying to get a better look at her, and trying to block her view. She was wearing a pink bandanna around her head. It was tied up tight, in a way that made her look as if she didn’t have any hair. She had a bruise on her forehead, a large purple and black and green circle, like a third eye. She had a panicked, hunted look in her two eyes. I turned to find the girls, trying to think how to keep them from seeing her. They were still watching the operators. I reached for the phone to say something, anything. She pressed against the glass as if she’d forgotten that it separated us. But even as I was yelling, “Pick up the phone,” she was backing away, making for the guard. The girls were at my side then, trying to see over the dividers. I thought for a second that she was going to fight the guard, but the minute he touched her she sank into his arms. She was limp, even as he pushed her off. He was shouting at her to stand up, to get moving. She kept sinking back into him. He finally had the sense to put his arm around her and let her out the door. He shook his head. He kept shaking his head as if to say, Not another crazy one.

Chapter Fifteen

——

T
HE FIRST TIME
I thought we’d have to leave the farm might well have been the day at the beginning, when I called around trying to find a sitter for the girls. I had called Suzannah Brooks and Cathy Johnson to ask them to take the children while I went to visit Alice. I remember standing with the phone in my hand watching Emma and Claire run through the sprinkler. They didn’t know yet that they were blackballed. They were skipping like they had nothing to worry about. Emma figured she’d wear twirling skirts to school in the fall and drink milk out of pint cartons. Kindergarten in her book was in the neighborhood of heaven. I guess I’d known as I watched both of them dancing in the spray that we couldn’t stay in Prairie Center. Still, it would be a lie to say I had seriously thought of selling the farm before that last night Theresa came down. I hadn’t known before just how easy it is to lie. I hadn’t known either, what it costs.

We got out of the visiting room at the jail as fast as we could on Sunday. The girls had at the most only seen Alice’s form, almost a shadow it was. “She can’t come down today,” I said, as we tore along the corridor to the outside.

“Why not? Why not?” Emma cried, running along to catch up with me.

“She’s sick,” I said.

Emma stopped by the locker where we had had to stash the car keys. “She is not sick!” The veins in her slender neck bulged when she screamed. “You made that up. She just didn’t want to see YOU!”

I slammed the locker shut. The door buzzed and I got out. I walked down the block to the car without hearing the girls screech after me. There was glass, a condom on the walk, scraps of Styrofoam in the gutter, paper twisted into the metal of the chain-link fence. “You’re lying,” Emma shrilled at my back.

After we settled in the car I suggested we go find a beach, that we take a look at Lake Michigan. The name comes from an Ojibwa word that means “It is a big lake.” I said so, to the girls. I could see Claire in the rear-view mirror, staring out the window. There were tears slipping down her cheeks. Emma had her head down and was crying to herself. What they were learning, what I was teaching them, was to grieve like adults. “We’ll find a beach,” I said. “We’ll hunt for some good skipping stones.”

“Shut up,” Emma said to her lap.

We did go to the lake, and we did gather stones. We found smooth gray and black and white stones. There was a large sign stuck in the sand that said in red letters, Swimming Prohibited, By Order of the Health Department. The beach was deserted. We walked, choosing stones and putting them in my cap. A few gulls screeched and flapped at us as we picked our way around the dead alewives. The sun was hot and the water looked hot. And the fish bones were baking and the stones in my cap grew heavier and heavier.

On the way home, near the outskirts of Prairie Center, we saw something that you never see in small towns. There was an older man, squatting by the highway. He was too close to the road, on the gravel shoulder. He didn’t have anything on his head. Our corner of the state was a prosperous one. There weren’t homeless people or poor minorities. There weren’t rich minorities either. The guy was squinting into the sun. He was holding up a piece of cardboard that said, I Need Food.

We drove past him and went on home. The girls took a swim and I
dunked in and out. I did the chores earlier than usual, and by seven-thirty Emma and Claire were in bed. Emma had been giving me the cold, silent treatment, as so many of her sex have done before her. After they were asleep I sat at the kitchen table to write a letter to Alice, to explain. I must already have known that I would try to sell the farm. Rafferty would be furious. He had often seemed to relish the fact that we had so much property, the one thing that should prove to the judge the quality of our citizenship. He used the words synonymously: upstanding, moral, hardworking, four hundred acres, sixty head of cattle. Our holdings were none of his business. Our life had come apart swiftly in June. We had waited through July and now into August. It had taken time to understand that the damage was irreparable. I knew that the girls couldn’t go to school at Blackwell Elementary. I knew that I couldn’t farm without a wife, that there wasn’t any point in farming without a family. I also couldn’t picture living down the road from Vermont Acres year after year. I’d have to sit in our living room reading the paper after lunch, knowing that up the way Theresa was singing in her kitchen.

“Dear Alice,”
I finally wrote:

I think I’d be a good used car salesman. Maybe in the next life. I’ve lost all of what you used to imagine were my redeeming qualities. Emma called me a liar this afternoon. I am no longer calm or moderate, and despite the tone of this letter, I’m not nearly so sentimental. I am worried about you. I’m sorry about bringing the girls. It was a mistake. Claire and Emma have learned to cry like adults. They sit by themselves and cry without making much noise. We need you with us, for plenty of reasons, but not least to gently help the girls shake off a few years so they can again have a tantrum. What a relief that will be
.

Howard
.

That was the best I could do. It took me nearly two hours to write so little. When I was finished I went out to the mailbox and slipped the envelope in the long, silver insides. I wondered if the man was still out on the road. It was the simplicity of the sign that made it effective. I Need Food. When my time came what would my sign say, I wondered. I Need
Work? Jokes? Family? Love? When I came back to the house I set the stones from the beach, one by one, in a glass pie plate. Those were our stones, to put up in the attic, our small, heavy pile for remembrance.

On Monday morning after chores I called Davis Realty in faraway Waukesha. I told the receptionist that I wanted to list the farm with them, that I would like to get the wheels turning as fast as possible. There were cicadas droning away in the trees, the first I’d noticed. They should have been singing for a couple of weeks. The whole place looked different. It looked like it didn’t belong to me anymore. Maybe the farm had slowly become unfamiliar, starting to change on the day Alice left, and by now, at this late date, it was finally unrecognizable. She had had a kind of fit that night before she was arrested—she had lost her mind while I made love to her. It was very probable she’d done it. I don’t think I would have thought her guilty if dozens of children had come forward with farfetched stories. She had always spoken of Robbie with an anger that seemed beyond reason. She wouldn’t hurt people in mass quantities—but one. She could have hurt just one. It was possible. I didn’t have to voice those thoughts to be certain about the farm. There was no point in having it anymore.

Shortly after two o’clock on Monday afternoon Sandy Brickman from Davis Realty got out of her dented Maverick. She tottered up the gravel driveway in her high heels. I had seen her scowling as she removed her keys from the ignition. She tried not to show her disdain for the house, which was visibly tilting to the south, and the outbuildings which long ago should have been burned to the ground. We had no grapevine wreaths stuck with dried flowers at our door. There were no lawn ornaments, no little black Sambos in cast iron, in our burned-out stubble. The place might have looked habitable if the grass hadn’t been white. It might have seemed a find if the shutters in the front weren’t hanging from one hinge, if the paint hadn’t chipped off and fallen like snow to the ground. Our home suggested ruin. Sandy Brickman, with her real estate radar, knew it before she’d even set foot on the gravel drive.

She had too much lipstick smeared on her mouth. She had bad skin, the pockmarked, greasy variety that reminded me of the girls in high school who used to give themselves away to any willing customer. Out of
all the surreal characters in our dream summer Sandy Brickman took the cake. She was incongruent in our landscape, as if she’d been set on our driveway as a gag. She stretched her hand out well before she was within seven feet of me. I called to her. I knew I didn’t want to get too close. “If we walk up to the plateau we can get an overview,” I said. She clasped my hand. She was sweating inside her pink suit. She looked directly into my eyes as if she had a method of measuring what I would settle for. Her rings dug into my skin and no doubt we exchanged something communicable in that shake. She thought that might be a good idea, to start off with the big picture. “The house—well,” she snorted.

My urchin children, who hadn’t had their hair combed, or a decent lunch, not to mention breakfast, trailed behind us.