Acts of God

 

Begin Reading

Table of Contents

About the Author

Copyright Page

 

Thank you for buying this

Picador ebook.

 

To receive special offers, bonus content,

and info on new releases and other great reads,

sign up for our newsletters.

 

Or visit us online at

us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

 

For email updates on the author, click
here
.

 

The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way.
Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author's copyright, please notify the publisher at:
us.macmillanusa.com/piracy
.

 

This book is dedicated to the Elm Place Gang and Jane Supino and Paige Simpson—Illinois girls all.

To D. R. for the memories, to Miss Dorsch for the lessons, and Larry and Kate for the rest.

 

In little towns, lives roll along
so close to one another;
loves and hates beat about,
their wings almost touching.

—W
ILLA
C
ATHER
,
Lucy Gayheart

 

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This book is a work of fiction. Winonah is a made-up place, and its inhabitants are characters from the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual locales, events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

1

My father used to say
that sometimes you think you know a person, only to find out that you don't. That life, when it comes to people, is full of surprises. I've found this to be true. You think you understand someone, only to realize that you didn't. That you were wrong all along. Perhaps this is why I have chosen to live in such a remote place—a ramshackle house on a spit of land on the Pacific Coast.

Friends who live elsewhere tell me—and they may be right—that this California coast isn't a place where anyone can live. That it is meant to slide, collapse, or drift out to sea. But I'm not uncomfortable on the edge of disaster; I'm not uneasy being where it might all fall apart. My father, who sold insurance for a living, also had a sense of taking risks and this was one of the things he imparted to me.

For years I've led a straightforward life. No wild parties, no mad flings. Still, sometimes I drive too fast along the Coast Highway. And I run in the mountains where cougar roam. Cougar, my son, Ted, likes to remind me, are predatory animals and they will stalk you to your front door, knock it down, and eat you in your own kitchen. I know I shouldn't drive fast or run alone where cougar dwell, but I take these small chances—these little risks. They don't seem so bad and, after all, this is why I have chosen to be in this part of the world.

Otherwise my life has been stable. One marriage, one divorce, two kids. Until recently I didn't seem to want anything big to happen, having felt that enough had happened to last me a lifetime. What I needed now was peace and quiet. I was fairly close to this California version of Nirvana when the first invitation arrived. It was slipped under my door on a sun-drenched morning when I was out on my run. I must have stepped over it as I came in.

The air had a sweetness to it that day and I'd gone way up into the hills, then jogged down to the shore, where the yellow ice plant bloom. I followed the beach for a mile or so, the waves crashing at my feet. Then I climbed the dunes home. I have my routine. Walk in the door, grab a water bottle from the fridge and a towel from the drawer. Cool off, then shower.

I was taking gulps of cold water and wiping my face when I noticed the envelope lying on the floor. The envelope had a cat's face printed in the upper-right-hand corner and in blue lettering, “Home of the Winonah Wildcats.” The mail doesn't come until after noon so I knew it must have gone to Betsy, my nearest neighbor. I hardly know Betsy except to wave, but often, for reasons neither of us can comprehend, we get each other's mail.

It was handwritten (a nice touch, I thought), addressed to me—Theadora Antonia Winterstone. A mouthful, I know. More name than a person like me needs but there you have it. When I was growing up, nobody called me by all those names. I was Theadora to my teachers, Tess to my acquaintances, Tessie to my friends, Squirrel to my family.

In my family we all had nicknames. We were, looking back until a certain moment, a happy family. When my father wasn't on the road, selling insurance or settling claims, we had our meals together. At night we were tucked into our beds. In the summer there were barbecues, a ball tossed around. Dogs, report cards, food fights. Normal things. I have no doubt when it all changed. But before, before that, Jeb was Trooper and Art was Squirt and I was Squirrel. “Trooper, Squirt, and Squirrel,” our father called when he was back from his days on the road.

Why was I Squirrel—a name some family members still call me affectionately or if they want to tease me; why Squirrel? In part because I scurried about, and still do, dashing from here and there, but mainly because I collected things—hoarded them, wouldn't let anything go. My pockets were filled with feathers and bones, stones and coins, stamps, seed pods and bottle caps—whatever I found on my way home from school. Leaves I pressed between wax paper, doll parts, ribbons. Whatever I found in the Cracker Jack box. Grudges. And my share of secrets too. I've held on to these as well. Stuff, my mother called it. Squirrel and her stuff.

My mother, Lily, was always checking my pockets when I came home from a walk in the woods, trying to toss out whatever she could. For God's sake, she'd tell my father or my brothers, “Don't give her any more stuff.” There was a certain dread when it came to cleaning my room. But my room was not a hodgepodge of these things. No, it was a carefully arranged place, museum quality, with everything neatly ordered, dusted, labeled on my shelf. Bird feathers, shells. Periwinkles, scallops, cockleshells. Souvenirs from outings we went on—a star key chain from Starlight Lake, a small wooden carved bear from the Dells.

Anything ever given to me, anything ever found, if anyone ever said, “Here, Squirrel, you can keep this,” I kept it. It was mine. I kept things for a long, long time and when I outgrew something, I put it in a box, labeled and tucked away, until Lily, on one of her massive cleanups, would go into the basement and throw it away.

Because of this side of my character, there were many speculations about what I'd grow up to be—a rag picker at rummage sales or a researcher for the CIA were among my less flattering prospects, but my father was sure I'd become a great collector and classifier—a biologist who discovered new species like that tiny East Indian owl, believed until recently to be extinct. Or a curator of ancient objects, a lawyer with a genius for precedents. Chief librarian at the Library of Congress. My father had great dreams for me and it was a known fact among the members of the Winterstone family that I had an archival mind.

But in fact I did not become any of these things. Nor much else, for that matter. I suppose I've been a bit of a professional dilettante, dabbling here and there. Though many things in life have interested me, I never landed on anything that would really matter very much. Looking back, I know that there are reasons for this—moments I can pinpoint in time.

Nothing ever came of all the stuff I collected until now. It is the remnant of my archivist's nature. I know how to put things in order. Every fact, every date, who was where and when.

This is what enables me to tell this story now. I know where everything is.

*   *   *

I examined the folded sheet with its goalposts and letter sweater with a big “W” for Winonah emblazoned across the front. As I headed to the shower, I tossed it into the recycling bin. When I left home to go to college, I had my reasons—and they were good ones—for going away. I thought one day I might return to the Middle West to live, but I never did. Twice a year I flew to Chicago to see my parents, but I never drove up to Winonah. I kept my distance. I stayed away.

I moved as far as I could and still be within the continental United States. I went to college in Berkeley. Then I married Charlie and had two kids. After my marriage broke up, I moved down the coast just below Santa Cruz, where I now live. I bought a stone house, built by Francis Cantwell Eagger, the poet whose work has had a recent surge of renown. It is the second place I've ever called home, and I intended it to be the last.

I tossed away the next invitation, which arrived a few months later, as well. I didn't even have to think twice about it. I wasn't going and that was that. It was my daughter, Jade, who dug the third and final reminder out of the bin. Pack Rat Jade, we call her, always rummaging in the trash. The apple didn't fall far with this one. Snooping through my things. We are alike in this way, my daughter and I. Jade is great at flea markets and in musty basements. “Wow, Mom, look at this,” she'll say, holding up an old doorknob, the cuffs of a long-gone fur coat. Jade can find a use for anything or can just sit for hours reading my old letters; nothing I'd ever meant for her to see.

It's pointless for me to buy lipstick because she'll snatch it, or have a private life because she'll uncover it as well. My daughter, the sleuth. So when she found this paper, she put it in front of me as if she'd just discovered evidence of some heinous crime. She pointed a bitten fingernail at the page.

“What's this?” Jade asked, hovering beside me, running her hand—another nervous habit of hers—through her close-cropped hair.

“It's an invitation to my thirtieth high school reunion,” I said, snatching the paper from her.

“Wow,” she said, “that's so cool,” as if she thought it really was. She looked at me, defiant almost, as if it were a dare. “Well, you're going, aren't you?” It was inconceivable to her that I would not. But in fact I wasn't. Winonah, for me, wasn't a place to go back to.

“No,” I said, “I'm not.”

“Not going where?” Ted put in, walking out of his room. From the corner of my eye I could see his door open. On the door the words “Clato Verato Nictoo” appeared. I didn't know what these words meant and Ted wouldn't tell me. I tried dozens of times to unscramble them as if they were an anagram, to read them backward, to extricate their meaning. “If you have to ask…” Ted said whenever I wanted to know. Clato Verato Nictoo. Just one more thing that keeps me from my son.

“It's an invitation to Mom's thirtieth high school reunion.” Jade snatched it back and held it up as if she were dangling a dead rodent by the tail.

“Oh, Mom, you've got to go,” Ted said, swinging the peace medallion with the shark's tooth he wore over his surfer's shirt. His buzz-saw cut revealed the pink of his skull. “It will be fun.”