A Peculiar Grace (33 page)

He drank half the beer. Then removed the photograph. Let it rest against the cushion of grass. The long-gone young faces beamed up toward him—so young, in their early twenties at most. His father attempting a deeply serious face—no doubt how he considered himself. No. How he wished to be viewed, a maturity he was striving toward. And the young woman in the first flush of life and wanting more of it. She was indeed lovely, not simply a beautiful girl but one who was radiant. Her face toward the camera, one arm extending around his father, the other hand lightly settled on the little girl’s shoulder.

Hewitt picked up the photograph of the young family and drained his eyes down upon his father. And of a sudden was weeping for the young man caught in that moment not knowing what faced him but somehow certain of his destiny, and for the man who survived all that and dug deeply within and went on. And wept for the burden of sorrow his father had chosen to hold—such magnificent sacrifice—so his second round of marriage and children might be free of his guilt, or fear of failure or dishonor. And Hewitt wondered then, for the first time, how his father had really felt about his success.

How could he not, being the man he was, believe in the full cost of that success?

Throughout the meadows and hayfields and within the orchard birds flew in and out, their end-of-day songs urgent, exquisite, beyond comprehension.

Celeste. Celeste and Susan. However much he studied them, he could not help but see the girl down the hill wound into herself, clearly struck from a common mold. And studying the photograph more he could see the same shimmer of uncertainty in the young woman that her now older niece possessed. And knew his father had not only known but seen wealth in that shimmer. And the dark solemn eyes of
the little girl—what sort of woman might she have grown to be? How far or close to her much younger cousin?

He refused to think some were chosen to suffer more than others.

Then he stood. The envelope filled again and tucked inside his shirt. The sky was thrilling down into slow red and blue upcast light against the western sky. He tipped up the beer and finished it and with a direct stride walked downhill toward the back of the house. A light burned in the kitchen and another window was lit upstairs. Which he realized he now considered her bedroom.

Seven

There was a clumsy awkwardness for a few days, almost as if they had become lovers; admitting not only the attachment each felt for the other but in a way lovers never can, knowing that bond ran back decades with a full unknown generation between each other, as if some glint of the original passion between Thomas Pearce and Celeste Willoughby had lived on in the universe and come down finally between these two souls, to bring them together and allow them a small measure of grace. And each had no way to voice this until one morning Hewitt looked over a bowl of cereal across the table to where she sat.

As if talking of the weather he said, “It seems to me we’re a great deal less at ease since we decided how much we mean to each other.”

“Oh,” she said. “I’m glad to hear you say that. I’m feeling kind of at loose ends, myself.”

Hewitt finished his cornflakes. Something she’d nudged him to. He felt like a little boy with his bowl of cereal. He said, “What you need is something to fill your time.”

Almost panicked she said, “I told you I’m a lousy employee. And I’m not broke. Not yet.”

He said, “I wasn’t suggesting you get a job. I was thinking you need something to do that takes you outside yourself.”

There was a pause and then she said, “And what would that be?”

“I don’t know. Why don’t you think about it. You come up with something, we’ll figure out how to do it.”

She seemed to chew on this, her jaw working. She was grinding her teeth, a habit he knew was old but had only noticed in these past days. Then she said, “What if it doesn’t work out?”

As mild as September Hewitt said, “Then we’ll try something else.”

I
T WAS BECOMING
a purely hot summer. With the exception of a couple of furious and wasteful thunderstorms, the last good rain had come the day Hewitt returned from New York State. By Independence Day everyone except the farmers had lost track of the last day not nudged into the nineties. There was talk of springs going low or dry, wells failing. The rowen burning under the sun, the young corn too. People took to the ponds, the deep riverbend pools.

Perhaps the heat helped but the throb of tension between Hewitt and Jessica gently gave way. The days were slowed and long with twilight extending to near ten at night and even then it was warm. But Hewitt knew, and sensed she did too, that each was coming to a peace between them—that never again would either be alone in the way they had once been, in the way each had furtively come to believe was their lot.

Evening in the garden, waiting for dusk, praying for the stir of air that clearly would not come. Drinking bottles of beer dug from an old milking pail filled with ice. A serious effort was needed to get through a beer before it became warm and soapy.

Jessica said, “God, it’s hot.”

“It’s summer,” said Hewitt. “Southern girl.”

“Hot is hot.”

“I guess so. But not humid as what you’re used to.”

“There’s no air, though.”

“What do you mean?” He swept his arm through the small cloud of blackflies and mosquitoes toward the bleeding western sky. Bats were sweeping forth from the barn eaves and swallows were in their last feeding spree of the day. “What do you call this?”

“I mean air conditioning. Where a body can at least cool off at night enough to sleep.”

“Oh that. Nope. But there’s an old fan in the closet if you want it. And you can always take a cold bath to cool you down before bed. Or walk up the brook to the pool and soak in that bitter water until you walk down shivering and crawl into bed. There’s ways to cope with it. But no, there’s no air. Because while this heat might haul right along until September there’s better odds it will break by early or mid-August so you might want a sweater or at least a long sleeve shirt this time of evening. What’s the point of something makes you want to stay inside for the three four months of the year you can count on to want to be outside?”

“Damn Yankee.”

“Damn right.”

The next evening they hiked up the brook to what Hewitt had always known as the Pearce pool, which was a sturdy effort some lost years ago to dam the brook just below a bend where there was somewhat of a natural pool anyway. A dozen feet across and half that deep.

For soaking the heat out of a summer body it was a gift. That first evening Hewitt had cutoff jeans under his Carhartts and Jessica was in her long shorts and oversized loose T-shirt and when they came to the pool he turned his back and stepped out of his workpants and walked straight into the center of the pool where he sank down into the sweet breathless cold and turned to see her on the bank lifting one foot as she removed her underwear. Before she walked out toward him. He watched her come and heard her gasp as the cold hit her thighs and then belly and he slipped head backward and down away from her. So he was submerged but for his face staring up to the sky. The first star. She cupped water and threw it in his face and then she dropped under the water and came up gasping from the cold and he was ready for her and from behind took her shoulders and held her under the water, away from him, feeling the stir of her legs kicking. Then let her up and she bobbed choking and spouting at him and he stroked slowly around the
edges of the small pool. When she got her breath back she moved close but not too close and said, “Shithead. What was that about?”

“You’re buck-ass naked girl. What in the world made you think you should go skinny-dipping with me? I’m not a goddamn saint. Except in your particular case I intend to be. So get a bathing suit. Okay?”

She was in the deep part of the pool and he was already up against the grass and mud bank, about to get out and put on his pants. He was cool enough.

She said, “In Mississippi it never mattered. If it was two of us or twenty. We just ran out in the country drinking beer and went out to the lake and everybody stripped down and went swimming. Or if someone was out of town we’d have a midnight pool party. What’s your problem with that?”

He was upright on firm land and had his workpants on and so he leaned toward where her white face above the water and her white form below were becoming both more clear and more vague as the evening gained. He said, “Well honey. It’s simple as this. It’s not just Mississippi. When I was your age a bunch of us would do the same thing. But you get older and it all gets more complicated. And you know it.” He looked up at the summer stars. Without dropping his head he said, “I’m going back to the house. Can you find your way?”

A pause. Then she said, “Of course I can.” Her voice sharpened up an edge.

He turned and walked away, uphill a little from the brook so he could walk across the steady bowl of pasture earth that led around to the house. He made about a hundred yards when she called his name and he heard her crashing through the grass after him. He stopped and turned and waited. She was dressed, dripping. She said, “I’m not trying to have sex with you, Hewitt.”

He said, “That’s reassuring to hear.”

“Fuck you. All right?”

He stood looking at her. Both up to their knees in meadow grass. The warmth weeping back through their cooling skin. Finally he reached out and took her shoulders in his hands. Arms stretched. “How long,” he said. “How long before you’ll relax and just be here?”

She tipped back her head, her eyes dark and lost in the night, her stretched neck a white tendril in the starlight. “I don’t know,” she said. “I can’t say.”

Hewitt said, “That’s all right, honey. You take as much time as you need.” And turned but reached back and took her hand in his and together slowly they made their way through the rising grass though the warm summer night toward the house.

A
CHECK ARRIVED
in the mail from the gate owner in Pomfret, along with a brief to the point note of admiration for the execution of the job. The check contained a bonus of five hundred dollars, noted in the memo line, which Hewitt considered returning because his price always contained not so much a bonus as what Hewitt thought of as contingency fees. But in the end kept the money. For Hewitt the note would’ve been enough, that and the fact that the man comprehended this contact through the mail was appropriate instead of driving over to stand in the dooryard and praise the gate and hand over the payment.

J
ESSICA WORKED THREE
days with Roger Bolton helping tear out lath and plaster from a house being remodeled up on Stinkbush Road. Coming home late grimed with dust, both white plaster and black centuries-old inner wall. She showered which halfway cleaned her up but did little to revive her otherwise. After half a beer she reeled with lost footing across the kitchen floor but sat down and ate the thick Angus tenderloin Hewitt had fixed for supper. The loin was near four pounds of marbled local beef and between them they ate it all. As she stood from the table she raised her beer bottle high and said, “I’m a meat eater. I’m a goddamn meat eater, Hewitt. And don’t you forget it.”

“Well, it’s pretty good beef.”

She said, “You should’ve seen us take down the ceilings. Between the downstairs plaster and the upstairs floorboards is maybe a four-inch gap. It was filled with two hundred years of mouse shit and corncobs and dust all stinking like pee. We couldn’t take up the boards from upstairs because they want those to stay. We had to get up on ladders with hammers and pry bars and break it apart a foot at a time. And all that rancid crap pouring down on you, no way to get away from it. I never.”

Then she laughed and fell down. From the floor she said, “Shit,” and then pulled herself upright and said, “I’m busted, brother. Flat busted. I’m going to take another shower and go to bed. I got that fan working. And Roger’ll be here half past six in the morning for me.”

“That sounds like a good idea.”

She was treading back and forth with her half-finished beer. She said, “Hey Hewitt?”

“Yup.”

“There’s all kinds of work. All kinds of life. You know?”

“I believe I do.”

She said, “Favor?”

“You bet.”

“Fifteen minutes could you make sure I’m in bed and not facedown swallowing water in my sleep in the shower?”

“You’re fine.”

“Promise?”

T
WENTY MINUTES LATER
she was sound asleep with wet hair and a sheet pulled up to her shoulderblades, the fan at full blast in the window. He guessed by morning she’d be chilled and so folded a light blanket over her feet with the lip stretched up along one side of the bed so she could reach it in her sleep. When he laid the blanket over her feet, one twitched. He stood over the bed looking down at her. Her face was smooth and no longer stark white, her skin infused with
gained color. Her forehead free of fear or doubt or scorn. She was a beautiful young woman and Hewitt stood above her before leaning down to brush the least kiss on that transformed unworried brow.

He went silent as he could back downstairs. To sit in the near dark kitchen and drink a last glass of water before his own bedtime. He sat drinking the cold water and knew that one day Jessica would leave him. A part of his life was to try to help this occur. And he knew he couldn’t predict time any more than time would allow him to predict himself. So all he had were moments.

He thought of his father and knew that man had known the same thing. As his mother still did. He wondered what was wrong with his sister, what was wrong with Beth that she didn’t understand this essential fragility. And then knew it was not people like himself or his father or Jessica or Celeste Willoughby who propelled the world forward. It was, surely, his sister, the Beths of the world who had no use for the past. Who understood dead was dead and all you could do was go on from there. Who knew it was a bad deal from the first and were determined to suck as much for themselves as they could, who would not leave well enough be but insisted that well enough was simply the warm-up for what was to come, that held no sentiment but strident walking forward. It was the Beths who owned the present. Always.