A Simple Thing (13 page)

“I have two sisters,” Betty said. “Bobbie, the one who's closest in age to me—she's my best friend. My sister Mel—Mary Ellen—and I never clicked in the same way. You don't know who your sister might have been.” She paused for a moment, and then said, “It's hard to know about Bill. He was always restless. Sometimes I think maybe he would have settled down as he got older, maybe been happy to stay here, to have a second chance at being a parent with the grandkids. Who knows?”

“I know what you mean about possibility,” Susannah said. Her father's death at fifty-eight had slammed a door forever on things Susannah had longed for—understanding, forgiveness, approval. Poof. Gone. No chance.

“That's what we mourn in every death,” Betty said. “Even if it's just the possibility of seeing someone one last time. Anyway, enough philosophizing.” She leaned forward to peer up at Susannah. “Can you get down?”

“I think so.”

“Well, good, because I'm not sure I can get up. My hip's been bothering me, which I should have thought of before I sat down on the cold ground and let it stiffen up.”

Susannah turned, hugged the trunk of the tree, and managed to slide and scramble her way down. She helped Betty up and they began to walk back toward the cottage. Betty looked at her out of the corner of her eye. “You're a worrier, aren't you? Like Jim.”

“Like Jim?” Susannah was surprised. Jim seemed so easygoing.

Betty shook her head. “God, yes. Why do you think I decided to raise him here? He thinks too much.”

Susannah stuffed her hands in the pockets of her coat against the cold. “It's hard not to worry about teenagers,” she said.

“But worrying doesn't change it,” Betty said. “That's what I tell Jim every time he's pacing the floor about Hood.”

Susannah looked at her. Little alarm bells were already starting to sound off in her brain.
Hood? The boy my daughter spends every waking minute with?

“Why? What has Hood done?”

Betty looked at her. “Oh, calm down. He's not a
bad
kid. You don't have to worry about Katie. He would never do something like you told us about, like that boy she was involved with at home.”

“I'm not saying he would. But of course I'm curious.”

“Typical dumb kid stuff. The motorcycle—he saw some video online of motorcycle jumpers and set up a course of his own on Gravel Pit Road. Broke his arm and wrecked the motorcycle. That was last year, when he was thirteen. Another time he convinced Baker to race him in the golf carts and they went up to Crane's Point and almost went over the cliff. Daredevily, boy kinds of things. Or this summer—”

Betty stopped walking. “People view things differently here,” she said. “So you have to understand this in the context of this place and the kind of people who live here.”

Susannah nodded. She stopped, too, and listened, her eyes on Betty.

“Hood was very good friends with Mary Lou and Ralph Flanagan, who lived up on East Road. Ralph was a navy pilot in World War Two and used to tell Hood all kinds of stories. He got sick last year with cancer and was in a lot of pain. Hood visited him every week for almost six months. After he died, Mary Lou wrote Jim and Fiona a note thanking them for all Hood had done. They thought she meant the visits.” Betty paused.

“What's wrong with that?”

“Then Mary Lou stopped by the Laundromat one day and ran into Fiona. She told her Ralph wouldn't have lasted as long as he did without Hood's ‘medicine.' ”

“Medicine?”

Betty looked at Susannah. “Marijuana. Hood was growing a couple of plants under lights in the barn and taking it over to Ralph to help with the pain.”

Susannah tried to still an instant sense of panic over the fact that Katie's new best friend knew how to grow and cultivate pot. Susannah herself had never smoked pot. As the child of an alcoholic, she had no interest in doing anything with the potential to twist her mind and personality the way alcohol had twisted her father. The loss of control implicit in anything more mind altering than a single glass of wine terrified her. Zach's casual fondness for drugs and drink had scared Susannah almost as much as his disgusting bet on Katie's virginity.

Betty sighed. “Sounder has a long and complicated history with marijuana. For the most part, people have a live-and-let-live approach. But four or five years ago a couple moved here and bought a few dozen acres of land deep in the middle of the island. We all knew they were raising crops; we just had no idea
what
. Someone tipped off the sheriff, I guess, because the DEA raided the island one morning. It was crazy.”

“Seriously? The DEA raided Sounder?” Susannah couldn't imagine poky, remote little Sounder being invaded by an army of government agents.

“Twenty-four DEA agents and police officers, with rifles and flak jackets and camouflage,” Betty said, confirming Susannah's impossible vision. “They swarmed all over the island. They found six hundred marijuana plants on Bob and Alison's farm. They even put Barefoot in handcuffs for three hours because they found two marijuana plants in his greenhouse.”

Barefoot —Quinn's new best friend—grows pot, too?

“The DEA agents scouted the island for a week before the raid. Agents with assault weapons roaming the woods where my grandkids were playing. It's the only time I've been afraid here—afterward, when I thought about what could have happened with all those men and guns and the boys right there.”

Betty pushed a wiry strand of hair behind her ear with her hand. “Barefoot grows a small amount of pot for medicinal purposes only,” she said. “Normally
he'd
have taken care of Ralph. But Ralph hated Barefoot—they had a bitter fight forty years ago about Kent State—so he wouldn't go to Barefoot for help when he got sick. I think that's why Hood stepped in. He researched varieties of medical marijuana, and grew it out in the barn, where we grow hydroponic lettuce. Jim and I didn't even notice; the boys tend to those lettuces, and neither one of us gives them a second glance. We're guessing he got the seeds from Barefoot's greenhouse.

“Listen,” Betty continued. “I know how scary the situation with Katie was for you, with that boy at home and the drinking. But this is different; you understand that?”

“I understand,” Susannah said. “Although I'm glad you told me.” She felt again the giant, looming iceberg in her chest—the danger underneath the surface of things. “I trust you and Jim, and Hood.”

Only later did she realize what she
hadn't
said:
I trust Katie.

Chapter 13

Betty 1956

The baby was born in Ballard General. Betty named him James Llewellyn because she liked the name James and didn't mind the accompanying nicknames, and because Richard Llewellyn was her favorite author.

She refused all anesthesia and pain medication. If she was finally going to give birth to a live baby, then by God she was going to experience every moment of it. And after all those months in bed feeling like someone half dead, someone who moved and breathed but didn't
feel
anything, giving birth was like an open-handed slap across the face, bringing her back suddenly to the world of feeling and loving and hating and caring. With each contraction she screamed out all her anger at Bill, pounded her fists in fury at her own naïveté, cried for all she'd lost.

The baby was born after ten hours of hard labor. Betty looked at his scrunched-up little man face, his tiny fists, and felt a wave of euphoria and fierceness like nothing she'd ever experienced before.
To hell with Bill,
she thought.
I don't know how to be married
. She picked up the baby and held him close.
But this I can do
.

Bill arrived two days later. Bobbie had already told the nurses that he wasn't to be allowed in to see Betty or the baby.

“He looks terrible,” Bobbie told her. “He's thin, and he hasn't had a haircut, for God's sake.”

“I used to cut his hair,” Betty said. “And he probably came straight from the farm when your telegram arrived. We should let him see the baby. It's his son.”

“He should have thought of that before he started chasing every skirt that walked by.” Bobbie held up a big box wrapped in blue paper. “I told him he couldn't come in, but he did bring a present for the baby.”

Betty tore off the wrapping and opened the box and found a baseball glove, a scorecard, and a pen. Bill had scrawled one word across the scorecard,
PLEASE.
Betty remembered that day at the baseball game when he'd told her she was a hell of a woman and kissed her and torn her scorecard into little pieces. She thought about the week after she'd lost the twins when he'd slept on the floor next to her bed in the hospital. She thought about her early mornings on Sounder, lying in bed next to him and feeling content. She thought about Annette Fahlstrom, and the woman in the yellow dress.

“I want to see Bill,” she told Bobbie. “I want to show him the baby.”

Bobbie shook her head and started to say something, but Betty put out a hand and gripped Bobbie's arm. “It's okay,” she said. “I know what I'm doing. It's not going to happen again.”

Bobbie looked at her. “You're crazier than Mel. Of course it's going to happen again. He's a cheater, Bets.”

But I'm not going to care again,
Betty thought.

She didn't put on lipstick or fuss with her hair before he visited. When he walked into her hospital room she felt a stab not of longing but of familiarity, the same sense she'd had as a child every time she walked through the front door of her family's house on Queen Anne Hill. He was thinner than when she'd seen him in November, but tanned and lean. He wore a blue chambray work shirt and khakis and had combed back his dark hair with water so it lay flat, but it was so long that it curled under from behind his ears. Betty didn't want to look at him too long.

“I named him James,” she said, pulling back the blue blanket so Bill could see the baby's face. “But we'll probably call him Jimmy.”

Bill didn't speak for a few minutes. She felt his eyes on her for a long time but wouldn't look up at him. When he saw that she wasn't going to make eye contact, he stepped closer to the bed and peered at the baby in her arms.

“My God, Betty.” Bill's voice was full of wonder, then concern. “He's so small. Is that normal?”

Betty smiled. “Yes. He weighed eight and a half pounds when he was born. Bigger than normal.”

“And he's all right? He's going to be okay?”

Losing the twins had scarred Bill, too. Betty laid the baby in her lap, his tiny head against her knees, and unwrapped the blanket around him so Bill could see his sturdy legs and arms, his perfect fingers and toes. “Yes, this little guy is fine.”

Bill studied his son. “His eyes are gray.”

“They'll change. They could be brown, like mine, or green.”

“Do you think he looks like me?”

I hope not,
Betty thought,
because it will break my heart every day
. “I don't know. I think it's too soon to tell. Bobbie says that Macy, her daughter, looked exactly like Dick for six months, and then started to look like her.”

Bill raised his eyes to hers. “Betty—”

She lifted her hand. “Shhh. Don't say it. There's really nothing you can say that changes what is.” She wrapped the baby up again and stroked his head, and he started to nod off, there in her lap.

“But this, but having the baby, it changes everything,” Bill said.

Betty looked at him. “Honey, I wish that was true, but I know it isn't.”

Bill had a weakness for other women; she understood it and understood it was never going to change. And she had a weakness for Bill; that was probably never going to change, either. It was something they shared, these weaknesses of theirs. But she had this baby now and needed to do what she could to raise him well.

“I've been thinking a lot,” Betty said. “I don't want to have to go to work and leave the baby all day. Bobbie says she'll take care of him, but she and Dick already have Macy to look after, and they want another child, and that's not fair.” She was dying for a cigarette, but the nurse had taken hers away. “Do you have a smoke?”

Bill took a pack out of the front pocket of his shirt and shook one out for her and lit it. She took a deep drag, and it calmed her.

“I can't get a job that's going to pay me enough to have my own apartment,” she continued, “and pay for the things the baby and I will need.”

“Jesus Christ! You think I'm not going to help take care of my son?”

“Calm down. I'm not insulting you. I'm being realistic. We own a farm that is not even breaking even, am I right?”

“Not yet, but—”

“All right.”

“But I was thinking I'd move back to Seattle,” Bill said. “Sell the farm and see if I could go back to work for Boeing.”

“No one is going to buy that farm, and we've got all our money tied up in it. And what makes you think you're going to be any happier working for Boeing now than you were a year ago? What makes you think you can get your job back, for that matter?”

Bill was silent.

Betty took another drag from her cigarette and turned her head to the side to blow out the smoke, away from the baby. “I've got an idea,” she said.

What if their marriage were simply a business arrangement? Betty would return to Sounder with the baby. And since the farm was not making any money and was unlikely ever to make any money, Bill could leave to work in Alaska or wherever the hell he wanted to go, and send money back. They would sell off as many acres as they could, so Betty could manage the farm while he was away with the help of one hired man. She could grow enough to supply herself and Jimmy with food for most of the year, and see if they could at least break even through selling eggs and the goat's milk. The money Bill made would get them out of debt and give them enough of an income to afford to buy things for Jimmy, or save for him to go to college someday. Bill could tomcat all he wanted while he was away; when he was home he was to avoid other women so as not to embarrass Betty or their son.

“You'll get to be with Jimmy when you're home on Sounder, and be part of his life.”

Bill rubbed his hands through his hair. “You're crazy. I don't want that. It's true I may have to leave the island to work; I can't make enough money with the farm, and I don't see how that's going to change. You know the Fahlstroms sold their farm and moved to Oregon. Corky's working as a carpenter now. And the Burnses moved to Seattle; Joe's teaching school. Sounder is a hard place to make a living.”

“I know,” Betty said. “But it's a good place to raise a child. So go make your living where you can.”

Bill shook his head. “I don't want to be off for months at a time and leave you and the baby—”

“Other families on Sounder do it,” Betty said. “Paul Duning works on the fishing boats up in Alaska. Don MacKenzie works for that steamship company. His wife told me he was gone ten months one year.”

Bill sat down on the chair next to her bed. “We are in debt,” he said. “If I can't sell the farm I have to figure out some other way to make money.”

“This is the way,” Betty said.

A long silence filled the room. Finally Bill looked down at the beige tiled floor and said in a low voice, “I've learned my lesson. I am sorrier than you'll ever know. I'm not going to have other women.”

“Maybe not,” Betty said. “But I don't want to pretend or hope that you won't.”

Bill flinched. He sat for a long time, quiet, gazing out the window. Finally he turned to her. “But that's not a normal marriage.”

“It doesn't have to be normal,” Betty said. “It just has to look normal, for Jimmy.”

Bill leaned forward in the chair, with his arms resting on his knees and his hat in his hands. He turned his hat over and over, studying it as though the answers to all his past and future lay hidden inside it somewhere.

“I'd like to have you and the baby come home to Sounder,” he said at last. “It's more than I expected.”

“It's more than you deserve,” Betty said. She had to steel herself not to reach out and push back the lock of hair that fell across his forehead as he leaned forward there, not to put her hand on his arm. “But it will be good for Jimmy, and for me. Sounder's an easier place for me to live.”

He looked up at her. “You are a hell of a woman, Betty,” he said. “I wish—”

“Don't,” Betty said. The baby stirred in her lap and she bent to him, grateful for the distraction.

“That's all,” she said. “So we're agreed. You'll find work as quickly as you can, and I'll move out to Sounder at the end of the summer with the baby.”

Bill stood up. “Okay. If that's what you want.”

Betty kept her eyes on the child in her lap. “It's what I want,” she said. “And one more thing: The doctor said I shouldn't get pregnant again. I was lucky to have Jimmy, but he thinks it's too risky for me to have another child. Since our marriage is now a business arrangement, I want to be sure you understand what is and is not included in that arrangement.”

Bill stood for a long time next to the bed, gazing at her. “I understand,” he said finally, and turned around and left.

 

Betty moved back to Sounder in September. Bobbie, who had spent the summer trying to argue her out of it, refused even to drive her downtown to catch the bus to Anacortes.

“I love you, Betty,” she said. “And I love that baby of yours. And I won't lift a single finger to help you get back to that man.”

Betty had looked at her with full eyes and nodded. She couldn't explain why she was doing what she was doing; she just knew in her gut that Sounder was the right place to raise her son and a good place for her to be. She knew, too, that she'd never be able to get Bill out of her blood and that this arrangement of theirs was something she had to try. Maybe she'd divorce him someday. But not yet.

Bill left in October for a job on a fishing boat in Alaska that would take him away through March. The money was good—more than they'd imagined. If he could make a similar amount every winter they'd be able to get out of debt within three years. Nick Condon, the man they hired to work the farm, was thorough and tireless. Most importantly, friends she'd only begun to get to know during her first year on Sounder turned immediately into family when she returned with the baby and a clear commitment to stay. Claire MacKenzie, Don's wife, had two toddlers and a husband who was gone nine months a year. To Betty's surprise, Claire became the kind of close girlfriend she'd never had, a surrogate sister who helped her through Jim's first ear infections and croup and confided in her about her own marital troubles. Her openness and lively curiosity emboldened Betty to talk, hesitantly at first, about the babies she'd lost, and Bill.

Ellen and George MacPherson, who lived on the next farm over, were always ready to help with farming questions or even hands-on labor. Lem Jacobsen, a young botanist who lived on Sounder when he wasn't traveling the world, took a shine to Jimmy during a party at the MacPhersons, and then came over the next weekend and built a raised bed outside Betty's kitchen door and planted a small garden of medicinal herbs—comfrey for healing cuts and scrapes, lobelia for cough, chamomile for toothaches and earaches.

She took the baby home to Seattle that first Christmas. Bobbie and Dick and Macy and Mother and Grammy and Mel were all there. Even Bobbie had to admit that Betty and Jim were thriving. Betty was strong from the physical work of the farm and life on Sounder. Pregnancy and breast-feeding had rounded her hips and filled out her breasts and face, so she wasn't all cheekbones and hip bones and elbows as she'd been before. Jim was the fattest little baby anyone had ever seen, even though he was still getting almost nothing but breast milk. Betty loved to grip one of his plump thighs with her hands and shake it, reveling in his sturdiness.