A Simple Thing (20 page)

And then Barefoot was gone, and Bill was home. Bill was almost forty now, with weathered lines around his eyes and across his forehead from his years of work on the boats, but his eyes were the same rich green, his smile the same seductive smile. He brought gifts, of course—genuine Indian arrowheads for Jimmy, and a necklace of crimson beads for Betty. He marveled at all she had done on the farm and with the house in his absence, at how much Jim had grown. He helped her with the chores, but several times she caught him referring to his summer on Sounder as “my vacation.”
That's great,
she thought.
When's
my
vacation?

She worried that when they made love he would notice some difference in her, in the way she moved, or touched him, or responded to his touches. But he was the same as always, eager for sex, considerate enough to try to make sure she came before he did, and then sleepy or indifferent afterward. She found it more difficult than she had expected to respond to him sexually. She was used to Barefoot's hand behind her head, Barefoot's solid weight on top of her, Barefoot's smooth chest and back beneath her hands. Bill—her husband—felt like a stranger to her now. He was taller and leaner than Barefoot, with a thick thatch of hair across his chest. She missed the way Barefoot talked to her during lovemaking, missed being able to talk herself. She tried once or twice to tell Bill, in a gentle voice, that she wanted him to touch her a certain way, or that she wanted to move in a different rhythm, or even that she liked something he was doing, but he seemed embarrassed by her words and didn't respond.

But Jim was happy. They went to the big annual July Fourth barbecue on Shell Beach, and boated over to Friday Harbor the next day to see the parade of ships all decorated with lights, and the fireworks. They went on a family camping trip to Patos Island and from there to the little islands of Sucia and Matia. They fished for tiger rockfish and Chinook salmon and, late in August, for Cohos. Bill built a tree house for Jim in the old Garry oak by the meadow.

Seeing Bill with their son and Jim's eager love for his father tore at her. She wondered if she could turn her marriage into a real marriage if Bill ever came home to stay for more than a month or two, be herself with him and let him get to know her as she was now, forged as she was into someone much more solid and authentic than the girl he had married. She owed that to Jim, she felt, and decided she would say as much to Barefoot when he returned.

She tried to talk to Bill about spending more time at home.

“Do you know how competitive it is to get onto a king crab boat?” he said. “If I said I couldn't work a full season, there are ten guys standing in line who'd be happy to take my job. We need the money too much. I can't do it.”

“We don't need it as much as we did. The farm's breaking even now, every season.”

Bill looked at her, his head tilted to one side. “You want me at home?”

She thought of Barefoot, of all their late mornings and early afternoons together, of Barefoot's blue eyes locked on hers when they made love, of the tenderness in his voice when he said her name.

She didn't answer his question. “Look at what it's meant to Jim to have you here this summer.”

“I can't quit now, for this coming season,” Bill said. “It's too late. But I'll talk to the captain this winter, and talk to some of the other guys and see if they know of any boats that might need someone just for a couple months. How's that?”

It was typical Bill. An answer that wasn't an answer. All at once she thought,
So be it.

Bill left September 1. Then one day in mid-September she stopped in at the post office to pick up mail, and Frances mentioned that Barefoot Jacobsen was back from Tibet.

“Really?” Betty said. She felt her heart thump against her rib cage, and tried to make her voice casual, easy. “When did he get back?”

“Day before yesterday. He came in yesterday for the mail.”

“Did he have a good trip?”

“As good as ever, I guess,” Frances said. “I've heard he has a wife there.”

Betty smiled. “Yes, I've heard that, too.”

“He's an odd one,” Frances said.

Betty nodded. She gathered her mail and made some excuse about Jim and needing to get home and left the post office, not willing to talk about Barefoot anymore in case her face or her voice or her very body betray her excitement and longing.

She went home and made dinner for Jim and thought about their summer together with Bill, as a family. She thought about the twelve years she'd spent married to Bill, who had done little but pursue his own needs. She thought about Barefoot. Maybe he'd changed. Maybe his four months of travel in exotic lands had reminded him why he had never married, reinforced for him the joys of freedom.

He came to her house the next morning, after Jim had left for school. He walked over, so she didn't hear him come up the dirt road, didn't hear his footsteps cross the meadow to the drying shed, where she was laying out onions and garlic for the winter.

“Elizabeth.”

She turned and saw him standing there, and his blue eyes pierced her heart. She walked over to him and held his precious head between her hands, looked at his tanned and wind-burned face, gazed into his eyes, and felt so much love for him she couldn't speak. He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face in her neck, inhaling the scent of her. She looked up at the sky above his head and felt a moment of complete and pure happiness.
If this is a sin,
she thought,
then I'll happily go to hell.

“Welcome home,” she said.

Chapter 20

Susannah 2011

The day after Thanksgiving, Susannah was the first one up, piling more wood in the stove to warm up the living room, grinding the beans for coffee, heating water. Matt and the kids were still asleep. They'd picked her mother up in Friday Harbor on Wednesday and then had Thanksgiving dinner with the Pavalaks there at the white cottage last night. With all the cooking and baking and washing up, Susannah hadn't had a moment alone with her mother, which was just fine. She hadn't had a moment alone with Matt, either, which was not so fine.

She stepped outside on the porch to feed the barn cats. The sky was a pale pink above the eastern horizon, darkening to deep blue overhead. A few late stars lingered in the sky. The morning was cool and calm, and the evening mist lingered in droplets of water pooled on the glossy leaves of the salal and clinging to the tall stalks of the grasses in the meadow. She could smell the sweet smoke from the fire in the kitchen stove, and hear the low, husky warbling of snow buntings.

Katie had apologized over and over again for giving her the cupcake. She'd written letters to both Barefoot and Susannah.
“I like it here, Mom,”
she had written.
“Coming here was a good idea. I want to be here with you. Please don't send me home.”

She took a deep breath. A movement caught her eye and she saw a figure on the path—Lila, hair neatly combed, a camel-colored trench coat draped across her shoulders. Susannah's stomach clenched.

“Morning, Mom,” she said, as her mother approached. “Did you sleep all right?”

“Yes,” Lila said. “It's so
quiet
here. And so dark.” She wore red lipstick and small pearl earrings and a matching necklace. The collar of her white blouse was turned just so over the neck of her sweater. All the things you
could
control, neatly in place. She came up and stood next to Susannah. “It's very peaceful. I can see why you wanted this. You were always so
busy
in Tilton. On the go all the time.”

“Yes,” Susannah said.

“It's also cold,” Lila said, rubbing her hands together. “There's a lot to be said for central heating.”

“Come on inside. I've got the stove lit and I'll make tea.”

Susannah led Lila inside and made a pot of strong black tea. After gazing out the windows at the meadow and the fir trees, and running a hand over the worn corduroy of the couch, Lila sat down at the table and wrapped her hands around her mug.

Susannah looked at her mother—her sharp profile, so unlike Susannah's rounder features; her fine, white hair, so unlike Susannah's thick, dark hair; her pale blue eyes, so unlike Susannah's brown ones. Even at seventy-three, her mother was a striking-looking woman, fine boned and pretty. Susannah could see not a trace of herself in her mother, or vice versa. Physically, she was her father through and through. And temperamentally she was her mother, all nerves and caution.

“I had fun talking to Katie last night,” Lila said. “She was telling me she's working on that boat up on some cliff. She's learned how to use all kinds of tools.”

“Right,” Susannah said. She broke three eggs into the big white ceramic bowl for pancakes. “She's learning woodworking skills, and some responsibility. Barefoot Jacobsen, the man she's working for, is a longtime islander—and a very accomplished botanist. Katie got into some trouble at school, and I wanted to keep her occupied. Working on Barefoot's boat has been great for her.” Susannah wasn't about to go into the story of Katie's poem, or the cupcakes, with her mother.

“But he sounds very eccentric, from what Katie says—maybe violent. She told me he shot a man in the hand once. And she's up there alone with him.”

“He's eccentric but perfectly sane,” Susannah said. “And he's not violent. That's an old story that happened fifty years ago in the Middle East. Another time and another country. He's been teaching Quinn how to identify all kinds of plants.”

Lila raised both eyebrows. “Quinn is spending time up there, too? You're not worried about this man's influence over your children?”

“No,” Susannah said. “It's not like that.”

“Well, they're your kids,” Lila said, stirring milk into her tea.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing. You know what's best for them, I'm sure.”

Susannah beat the eggs together with more vigor than she intended.

“Katie's changed a lot since I saw her,” Lila said. “She's so tall, and looks so grown-up. And she's so”—Lila searched for the word—“
outspoken
. How old is she now? Thirteen?”

“Fourteen. She turned fourteen in September.”

“Ah, right. I'm trying to remember what you were like at fourteen.”

I turned fourteen two months after Janie died,
Susannah thought.
You were a zombie
. “I was quiet,” Susannah said. She picked up the saucepan in which she'd melted butter and poured the golden liquid into the bowl with the eggs. “It wasn't a great year.”

Lila closed her eyes. “No,” she said. “It wasn't a great year.” She opened her eyes and looked up at Susannah. “I wish—” She stopped. “It doesn't matter. It is what it is. Still, we've never talked about it.”

“Mom, don't.” Susannah began to whisk the eggs and butter and milk together. “Losing Janie was a tragedy. I don't blame you for having such a hard time afterward.”
Although I'll never understand why you let us go in the first place
. “As you said, it is what it is. We don't need to talk about it.”

Susannah remembered a day ten months after the accident. Their father had moved out, and Lila had found a job as a secretary at the local high school. She was getting up and getting dressed and going to work every day, cooking dinner, acting almost like a normal mom. Aunt Tessa urged Susannah to do something for Mother's Day. Susannah had her reservations. She couldn't articulate them, even to herself, but it didn't take a genius to figure out that Mother's Day had the potential to crush Lila's fragile return to normalcy as carelessly and permanently as a foot coming down on a tiny green shoot.

“She's going to be sad on Mother's Day,” Susannah said to Tessa. “She's going to be reminded about Janie.”

“You think she ever forgets?” Tessa said. “She also needs to remember she has two living children who love her, and that she's a good mother to them. Do something.”

So Susannah, ever the dutiful child, walked Jon over to the drugstore and picked out two cards and a small box of candy. She worried about it. Were the cards too cheery? Too solemn? Should she
make
a card instead? It had been so long since Lila had any genuine relish for food that Susannah couldn't even remember if she liked candy.

Then, at the checkout counter, her eyes lit on a tiny red bird made of folded paper.

“What's that?” she asked the clerk.

“An origami crane,” the clerk said. “We sell the kit, over there.”

Susannah picked up a box with small squares of bright paper. “Folding a thousand paper cranes is an expression of hope and goodwill,” she read on the box
.
“This beautiful symbol is a perfect gift for special celebrations. The kit contains everything needed to create and display a thousand colorful cranes.”

Susannah put the candy back and bought the kit. At home she read the instructions and, after several failed attempts, folded a sheet of pink paper (Lila's favorite color) into something resembling a bird. She made another one in purple and told Jon he could give it to their mother. She didn't have time to make a thousand, which sounded pretty daunting, not to mention dull. But if they gave these two to Lila with the cards and told her about all the luck and goodwill they represented, maybe that would be a good Mother's Day present.

Before dinner that night, Susannah put the cards and the cranes on the table next to Lila's plate.

“What's this?” Lila said. She picked up the pink crane. “This is so pretty.” She smiled at Susannah, a warm smile that reached her eyes.

Susannah remembered the hope that flooded into her, a rush of warmth and relief.

“It's Mother's Day,” Susannah said. “Happy—,” she started to say, then bit it back. That wasn't the right word, not yet. “We wanted to do something for you.”

Pain settled into Lila's eyes, darkness coming home to roost. “Oh,” she said. “Mother's Day. I forgot. It's good of you kids to remember.” She picked up the pink crane and put it down on the outstretched palm of her left hand and studied it, twisting her wrist so she could view it from every angle.

“Did you make this?” she said.

Susannah told her about the thousand paper cranes, that she planned to make ten a day so she could make a thousand by Christmas, and they could hang them in strings for luck like in the picture on the box.

Lila stared at the crane for a long time, while Susannah and Jon stared at Lila. Susannah remembered the sense that her mother was fighting with herself, waging some great internal struggle that, finally, she lost, because her eyes filled with tears and she pushed her chair back from the table and walked into her room and closed the door, leaving the cards unopened on the table, and Jon's purple crane sitting there alone.

Aunt Tessa came over not long after, and told Susannah she'd done the right thing, it was just going to take time. Then Tessa spent a long time in their mother's room with the door closed, while Susannah and Jon tried to ignore the murmuring voices, the sobs. The next day Susannah found the pink crane crumpled into a ball at the bottom of the wastebasket next to her mother's bed.

Susannah didn't like remembering.

“Here.” She handed her mother another, smaller bowl, with the dry ingredients inside. “Whisk those together, will you? I've got to find the griddle, and I'm going to wake Matt up. The kids want to take you on a tour of the island. It'll be fun for you to see everything.”

“Or I could stay here and help you with whatever you need for dinner. Matt could spend some time alone with the kids. It would give us a chance to talk.”

“I don't need help. I've got it under control,” Susannah said. She did not want to spend an afternoon in the cottage with her mother, peeling potatoes and fending off her mother's attempts to talk to her about things that had been left unsaid for thirty-odd years, things Susannah could not and would not discuss. Too late for all that now.

“You go with Matt and the kids. Maybe I'll come, too.”

Lila sat back in her chair. All at once she looked older to Susannah, the lines on her face deeply etched, the shadows dark under her eyes. Her eyes searched Susannah's face, but Susannah turned away, to look for the cast-iron griddle.

“Fine,” Lila said. “I'll go.”

 

They spent the afternoon showing Lila everything—the barn, Jim's cabin, Shell Beach, the Laundromat. They even drove up to Crane's Point to show her Barefoot's house and the boat. They finished their tour with a stop at the school.

Katie had wanted to go fishing with Hood, but Susannah refused. She didn't want the two of them spending too much time alone together. And this was a family outing: Katie needed to come. She came, but she was a like a tethered wild thing as they visited each place, pacing and rolling her eyes and running nervous fingers through her hair.

Finally, as Quinn started to point out and name the varieties of grasses that grew alongside the road by the school, Katie had had enough.

“Oh, my God,” Katie said. “Listen to yourself! You sound like some hundred-year-old biology professor. You can't possibly imagine anyone gives a crap about the name of the
grass
. Seriously. This is why no one liked you in Tilton.”

Quinn turned an angry face to her. “Shut up!”

“That's enough, Katie,” Susannah said. “Leave him alone.”

“Oh, right,” Katie said. “Get mad at
me
. Do you have any idea what was happening to him at home? Or what
I
had to do to protect him?”

“Shut up! I don't need anyone protecting me,” Quinn said. He glared at Katie.

“What do you mean?”

“He was like the outcast of the entire sixth grade,” Katie said. “At the bus stop these two girls used to hug him and rub against him until he blushed and then everyone would laugh, and then the guys would push him around and call him names. I finally told them off, and then
I
got in trouble.”

“Stop it!” Quinn's face was bright red.

“You got in trouble?” Susannah said.

“Yes!” Katie was angry now, the words spilling out. “My bus was late one day, so I was still at the bus stop when Quinn came. And those assholes—sorry, Mom, those
mean people
—were teasing him and I finally told them off. I missed my bus. So I walked to school. Then I ran into Hillary, and she asked me to skip school with her. I was so mad I said, ‘Sure.' Then I got in huge trouble. All because of Quinn.” She spat his name.