Beneath the Night Tree (6 page)

“It’s hard to photograph Francesca’s kids,” I told her. It was the truth, but I didn’t know if it would be enough to pacify her.

“I thought you loved Carlye.”

A smile danced across my lips because she hadn’t bothered to mention Angelica. Grandma knew me too well. “I do,” I said, “but that doesn’t make the job easy.”

“A cup of tea,” Grandma declared, pressing herself up from the table and going to put the kettle on. “You need a hot cup of tea and a few minutes to yourself.”

I didn’t want to be alone. I wanted her with me and I almost said so. But she seemed frail as she lifted the kettle, the palsy in her hands making the water slosh around like waves on a restless sea. I had to sign her checks for her these days. And separate her tiny pills from the army of bottles that stood guard on the windowsill above the sink. I snuck a peek at the clock on the wall and realized that at nine, Grandma was ready for bed.

“Let me get that,” I said, reaching around to steady her hand with my own. Her skin was warm and soft, as insubstantial and flimsy as a knotted tangle of old lace.

“Sorry,” she murmured. “These hands . . .”

“Are beautiful,” I finished. I squeezed her fingers gently so as not to leave a bruise.

“Are old,” Grandma laughed.

“You’re not old. You’re immortal.”

She looked at me for a long moment, her warm eyes like melted caramel, and smiled at what she saw. “No,” she told me, “I’m not immortal. But I am eternal. I just have to face my mortality first.”

I didn’t mean to tremble at her words, but soon Grandma’s hands were gripping mine in a hold that was part steadying, part palliative. “You have to be immortal,” I whispered. “I can’t imagine life without you.”

“I’m an old woman,” Grandma said. “I have lived a life of abundance. My cup overflows.”

“It’s not your cup I’m worried about.”

Grandma clasped my hands for a second more; then she took a step back and studied me as if to cement my every feature in her mind. “I’m very proud of you,” she said finally.

It was something she said often, but I had never felt so undeserving.
If you only knew,
I thought. In the depths of my heart, where I could still pretend that the unfolding map of my life was charted by different choices, I wanted to pack for Iowa City. To be with the man I loved, unhindered, unburdened. There was nothing to be proud of in that. Especially when I was so needed here.

“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.

“It has everything to do with everything. Julia, I’m not worried about you anymore. I don’t fear for your future or wonder if you’ll wander forever. Lots of people do that, you know. Wander.”

“I’m a wanderer.”

“No, you’re not.”

It was hard not to roll my eyes, even though I knew she was only trying to shore me up, encourage me so that one day I could stand alone. The thought made my heart whimper.

“All I’m saying is you’re going to be just fine. Even when this old body proves its fragile humanity.”

Fragile humanity . . . Weren’t we all breakable? And yet, all at once it wasn’t hard for me to imagine her gone. This woman who had been my constant, the mighty wind that kept me upright through every storm of my life, had somehow faded before my very eyes. Grandma was a whisper, a quiet breeze, a soft sigh that would someday weaken and disappear. I didn’t even realize that I was blinking back tears until she chuckled and cupped my face in her hands.

“No tears.”

“You cry all the time.”

“That’s different. I’m allowed.”

“And I’m not?” I cried, incredulous.

“Not over me. And not today. I’m not going anywhere today.”

“You’d better not be going anywhere tomorrow either. Or the next day.”

Grandma turned back to the kettle and set it on the stove for my solitary tea, switching the burner on high. “I’m off to bed. A little time alone will change your perspective.”

I wasn’t much in the mood for a shift in perspective—I was more eager to wallow—but I forced a smile and let her go. The kitchen felt empty with her gone, dim and shadowy because dusk had fallen when we weren’t watching and we hadn’t bothered to turn on any lights. I flicked on the lone bulb above the stove and leaned against the counter to survey the whole of my domain.

It had changed a little in the years since Daniel was born. When I got a bonus check after working at Value Foods during one particularly lucrative season, we put new flooring in the kitchen and living room. It was cheap laminate that was textured and colored to look like real wood, but it ate holes in all our socks and was cold in the wintertime. Though I swore I wouldn’t miss the outdated shag we hauled to the dump, I did. And there were different pictures on the walls now. Grandma had been a sucker for samplers, and while she never got into cross-stitch herself, many of her friends loved nothing more than to painstakingly sew Bible verses and trailing flowers that they framed and gifted. Where the poem “Footprints” once hung, Grandma had mounted one of my better portraits—a photo of Simon and Daniel when they were still little, holding hands as they walked down the gravel road near our house. Their backs were to the camera and their heads were bent together, the sunlight on their hair making them radiate as if from within.

The other changes were more subtle. I could see a toy peeking out from beneath the buffet. One of Daniel’s Imaginext pirates, if I wasn’t mistaken. And Simon had left a paperback novel on the side table—a Hardy Boys mystery that looked dog-eared and much loved. Grandma’s Bible was still the single decoration on our kitchen table, and it had only become more filled and worn with time. She had given it to me all those years ago, but I still thought of it as Grandma’s Bible. The truth was, it was all of ours now. It belonged to our family. I knew that she was hoping I would pick it up when she went to bed, that I’d scour it for wisdom, comfort, and advice. I didn’t have the heart. Instead, I averted my eyes from the cracked leather cover and the many things I knew I should do.

By the time Grandma was in her robe, false teeth in a pink melamine cup that had been a part of her bridal set, the kettle was whistling merrily. I took it off the stove, waving good night as my sweet grandmother closed the door to her bedroom, and realized that the last thing in the world I wanted was a cup of hot tea. Or to be surrounded by the thinly veiled disorder of our threadbare lives. What had been so dear to me only moments before, so quaint, suddenly seemed tarnished and shabby like a piece of elegant furniture that had been repaired with duct tape.

For all intents and purposes, I was a prisoner in my own home.

Trapped.

I had never thought of it like that before, never allowed myself the luxury of examining my situation closely enough to see the truth. Instead of bemoaning the particulars of my life, for five years I had done everything in my power to rise to the occasion, to be an exemplary mother, sister, and granddaughter. After all, the circumstances of my existence were born of my own choosing. My mistakes—and the mistakes of others—had charted a path for me that I never imagined or hoped for.

In the months and years after Daniel was born, Grandma spoke so earnestly about God’s design for my life that I couldn’t help but soak in every word as if her quiet proclamations were water for my parched soul. A plan for me. A good work that would surely be brought to completion. Hope and a future.

Right now, those words rang false. Maybe for me, God meant something very different. Like despair and a holding pattern—my life was nothing more than an endless cycle of monotony.

“I gotta get out of here,” I muttered to myself. Grabbing an ice-cold Coke from the fridge, I tiptoed to the bottom of the steps and listened for signs of life from Daniel’s bedroom. All was quiet. The same was true for Simon’s room, though by the sliver of light that escaped from beneath his door it was obvious that he was reading by the glow of a flashlight. I shrugged. He was ten, after all. It had been my hope to get him in the school routine before a strident schedule was upon us, but a couple of late nights wouldn’t kill him.

I left the house as quietly as I could, squeezing out a one-foot crack in the screen door because I knew it would squeak if I opened it any farther. Once on the porch, I breathed a little easier. At this one moment in time, I had no obligations, no responsibilities. Nobody was expecting me to do something or go somewhere. Nobody needed me. I popped the top on my Coke and drank half of it in one long swallow. I’d be up for the better part of the night since caffeine always did a number on me after supper, but I didn’t care.

The sun had set while I was putting Daniel to bed, but the remnants of a late summer twilight still smoldered against the far horizon. As I watched, the fields that had been flush with crimson faded into a fierce, living obsidian. All was quiet, but the world seemed strangely animate. The fireflies that had decorated our midsummer nights were long gone, and the cicadas that had screamed their unearthly tune were silent. Yet the air around me lived. I breathed it in and took off down the steps.

I wished I were the running type—or at least the sort of girl who had a goal in mind. Sometimes I felt if I could only decide on a destination, the journey would come easily. But I wasn’t nearly so farsighted. More myopic, focused on the now, the day-to-day. So instead of lacing up a pair of tennis shoes and sweating out my frustrations on a long, punishing jog, I slapped across the lawn in my worn flip-flops and took off down our gravel driveway at a snail’s pace. I wandered.

The thought that Grandma was wrong about me made me sad, but it didn’t stop me from ambling down deserted gravel roads with aimless abandon.

There was a farm about a mile from our property where the land cut away as if God had taken a scythe to the soil. It was the high point before the little river valley of the Big Sioux, a muddy, winding waterway that separated Iowa from South Dakota in my forgotten corner of our often-overlooked state. I felt like I could see forever from the ridge at the edge of Mr. Vonk’s property, and if the curve in the distance was merely the rolling of the prairie landscape, I never failed to pretend that it was the bend of the earth as it bowed away from me.

Iowa City was at my back, the place where Michael lived and waited. My future home, if I wanted it to be. And yet, as I stared off into the shadows that still waltzed along the farthest reach of my cloudy vision, I had no desire to turn around and search the darkness for hints of my future. Maybe I was just stuck in the middle. Michael behind me; Grandma before me. And I was suspended in between. Alone.

Wasn’t that exactly what I had always feared? When Janice left, when Dad died, when the father of my baby proved himself to be a coward and a deserter, the same track played over and over in my mind, a scratched CD repeating the tired refrain:
You are alone; you will always be alone. . . .

“That’s ridiculous,” I said out loud, startling myself. But it felt good to talk, and there was no one around to hear me raving like a lunatic. “You have a son who loves you, a brother who was returned to you, a grandma who sacrificed everything for you, a boyfriend who . . . wants you to move away with him . . .” I trailed off. The way I felt, Michael might as well have asked me to move to the moon.

I looked up as if to find him there and realized that the only light left in the sky came from a waning moon that had been full only days ago. It was disappointing to see that pale sphere like a ruined fruit, its perfect symmetry destroyed by the slice of a razor’s edge. But it reminded me all the same that I should get home. That Daniel might have a nightmare or Simon might get up for a drink and want to talk. I needed to be there for them.

As I turned to retrace my steps through the darkness, it hit me. I wasn’t alone. I never would be. It was a long, hard road, but I would walk it because of them. We’d make it. It was dim comfort, but I cupped it in my hands and protected it, hoped that if I breathed it into life, it would continue to glow, to grow. I had learned to cling to fragile hopes long ago.

“You are not alone,” I whispered to myself. “And you are not a wanderer.” My nose crinkled in disbelief at my own words, but I determined to make them true no matter what I felt. I would make a plan. I would stick to it. What other option did I have? I had to focus on what was best for Daniel and Simon, on the path that would offer them the sort of life they deserved.

When I got home, the house was still. The light beneath Simon’s door had been extinguished, and as far as I could tell, everyone slept in peace. All was as it should be. For a moment I was tempted to call Michael, to tell him that as much as I loved him, I couldn’t move away with him. Not now. Maybe someday, but for now my place was here. He would understand. Or he wouldn’t. And I’d lose him.

Just the possibility of his good-bye was enough to steer me far clear of the telephone. I might be accepting my situation, but I wasn’t ready to lose the man I hoped to marry.

The caffeine had made me restless, just as I’d known it would, but for once I didn’t mind. I had taken a week off from Value Foods so that I could enjoy the last dog days of summer with my boys, and it wouldn’t kill me to oversleep in the morning. Not that Daniel would let me. But if I promised Belgian waffles and strawberry syrup, there was a slight possibility that he’d allow me to cuddle him in bed for an extra minute or two.

I wasn’t much in the mood for TV, so I turned on our ancient laptop, a donated relic that the local high school had outgrown. It wasn’t good for much besides writing papers and checking e-mail, but that was all we really needed it for anyway. Someday, if I got a digital camera like Francesca openly wished I would, I’d like a new computer to go with it. A Mac, maybe, with all the cool photo software that everyone seemed so excited about. I could edit my own pictures, crop and zoom and play with color. I used black-and-white film in my camera from time to time, but there was something enticing about the thought of switching from sepia to natural light to color saturation at the click of a button.

As the computer whirred to life, I set aside my technology daydreams and tried to be content with what I had. The word processor worked great when I was writing papers on the social development of toddlers, and the truth was that once bad weather hit, my photography dabbling would be cut short. I didn’t have an indoor studio, and no one seemed too eager to pose outside in below-zero weather.