Authors: Vinita Hampton Wright
Dwelling Places (12 page)
“Mack, there is nothing bad going on here. I can remember going through a real religious spell when I was about Kenzie's age, and she went through some sort of experience a few months ago, when she went to the revival over at the Baptist church with some of her friends. She really went through something, and we have to respect that. She'll be fine.”
“Religion is okay in regular doses, but when a kid that age is so wrapped up in it, it's some sort of escape.” He turns to point a finger at Jodie. “And a church leader who encourages kids to spend all their time praying or fasting or whatever is taking advantage in some way. I want to get to the bottom of this.”
“No. You can't do that. This is Kenzie's thing, and you just stay out of it. I've talked with the pastor over there and met the youth pastor. They're fine. They're just trying to give the kids healthy ways to spend their time. They organize cheap trips to Des Moines to go to rallies or sometimes just take the kids together to a movie or something. They sponsor lock-ins where the kids all spend the night together, usually on prom night or some other time when they're under pressure to go out drinking or sleeping around. You just leave it alone.”
“All I want to know is what they're teaching about fasting.”
“She goes without food for a day every month or something. That is not extreme. It's for prayer time.”
“All I hear from her is Jesus, Jesus. She's got to learn to keep her mind on what's going on here and now.”
She stands near him then, full of exasperation. “If her grades aren't suffering and she's not getting in with the wrong kids, I see no reason to interfere.” She pauses and then averts her eyes from him, turning back toward the closet. “Little wonder she obsesses over Jesus. All the men in this family have checked out.”
“Oh, well, there we have it.” Mack brings a hand down to slap his thigh. “One more thing that's my fault. My kids are off doing things I don't even know aboutâbecause nobody bothers to tell me anythingâand it's automatically traced back to me. I can see where this is going.”
She takes a breath and begins to answer, but he cuts her off.
“I spend my days building arguments to defend myself, giving myself reasons to explain things that happen
that have nothing to do with me!
”
“I'm not saying it's all your fault. But you have to understand that the child's lost an uncle and aunt and her cousins, and in some ways she's lost you too. She's just fourteen. She can't just suck it in and go on.”
“She hasn't lost me. She never lost me.”
“Yes, she did. When you wanted to die, you turned your back on her. No one blames youâyou were ill and couldn't help it. But to a kid it feels like rejection when a parent doesn't want to stick around anymore.”
He looks at her a long moment. “I'm back now. I'm right here. Does that even count to anybody here?”
Her lower lip sucks on the upper one, to keep words in, but it doesn't work. He can see that he is about to regret his insistence.
“Nothing counts right now,” she says, a shirt in one hand, hanger in the other. “I can't afford to hope, Mack. I can't bring myself to rely on you. Sometime I will, but not now.”
“Then why am I here?” He is louder than he means to be, and he glances toward the hallway and the kids' rooms.
She is calm, as she always is. Calm and unmoved. “You're here because this is your home.”
“But why? Why do you even want me back?”
“Mack, how am I supposed to answer that? What am I supposed to say? This is hard for everybody, you know that?”
“But especially for you, that's what you mean, isn't it?”
“Don't start this. Don't start this.” Her hand is up like a shield. “Don't make this my fault.”
“I wouldn't think of it. Because we all know it's my fault, right?” He jams a finger into his chest. “
I'm
the problem here.”
“You're saying thatâno one else is.”
“No one else is saying
anything
, not to me anyway. I'm just the crazy guy come home to live. But no one's talking to me about anything.”
She waves her arms. “What are we not talking to you about? Are we having secret discussions behind your back?”
“My guess is that you are.”
“Oh!” She claps both hands to her head and walks to the window. “Please, please don't get paranoid on me. Please don't do that.” She swings to look at him. “Are you taking your meds?”
“Yes, I'm on my meds. I'm doing everything the friggin' doctors tell me to do. I'm doing everything Mom tells me and everything you tell me. I'm being good!”
“Stop this!”
“You stop it!”
“Stop
what?
”
“Stop⦔ he wanders to the opposite corner, searching wildly for the thought he needs. “Stop treating me like I don't count anymore. Like you can't count on meâyou said that yourself.” He leans against the wall, bone-tired.
She puts down her flailing arms, walks back to the bed, and sits down. She doesn't look at him but stares out at the beanfield. Her voice softens. “There's a difference between not counting on you at all and not being willing to give you major responsibilities. I'm not
going to ask you to jump in three weeks after getting home and take over finances, medical stuff, the kids' troubles, and all the rest. For one thing, I'd like to give you more time to get settled. For another, all those things are so critical that you can't let up the least little bit and keep up. I spend hours and hours a week dealing with all this. I've kept up with it for about three years now, and it's hard to just give it up and trust it to somebody else. I have my systems worked out.”
“So what is it you can't count on me for, if you're not expecting me to do any of that?”
“I'm not sure. Just never mind.”
“I can't ânever mind' when you say something like that. Look, I know you're mad as hell about all thisâall of it. I know you've had to carry everything for a long time, and I think it
is
time that I take over something. I'm not the invalid everybody seems to think I am.”
“It hasn't been that long, babe, since we were sitting up with you and hiding the guns.”
The silence that follows expands between them. His words come out short, bitten: “So every time you need to win an argument now you'll be throwing that in my face?”
Color rises in her cheeks. She gets up from the bed and walks past him to the door. “If that's what you think I'm doing, then we've got no more to say to each other.” He listens to her angry steps descending the stairs. There was a time when he would have heard sniffles too, but as far as he knows, she hasn't cried in a very long time. This in itself is reason enough to believe that she has withdrawn from him completely. His pain does not hurt her anymore. And she no longer responds with pain, but with angerârefined and practiced and filled with words so articulate they are sharp.
He looks at the bed, the dresser and closet, the chair, finally the window that faces the fields and fading sky.
This is not his home anymore. He finds no comfort here.
DISORIENTATION
BREAKING GROUND
I am a poor, wayfaring stranger, while journeying through this world of woe,
Yet, there's no sickness, toil nor danger, in that bright world to which I go.
I'm going there to see my Father, I'm going there no more to roam;
I'm only going over Jordan; I'm only going over home.
â“Wayfaring Stranger”
Rita
She can't believe that the world is well into October, until she steps out the door and is chilled instantly. Wood smoke streams from two or three nearby chimneys and lingers in a faint haze above backyards. Whereas recent weeks were filled with the near-ominous presence of fields brimming over and extending to every horizon, these days offer a sort of emptiness. The harvested cornfields are dark expanses of stubble, while the land looks shaved where soybeans stood just days ago.
Rita gets in the car and drives in darkness past empty fields; whether corn or beans, the bounty has been cut and cleared, stored or sold, depending on market prices. The place always feels different the
first few days after combines have shuttled over the last acres. Once the ever-present crop dust has cleared, the country is less dense, the land swept by steady gusts that arrive from colder, distant places. People and livestock gulp at the atmosphere, enjoying the lower humidity and a slight spiciness in their nostrils.
Every autumn Rita finds a certain relief: the high-labor seasons are over for now, and all that's left are the shortening days and hardening land. Remaining plant matter sours and disintegrates into the topsoil. The cold and quiet are on their way, and nearly everything will soon have opportunity for rest.
There is no real rest for the weary, however, and Rita has been in overdrive all day, having begun her fall cleaning at six this morning. She has sorted through her kitchen, leaving just one cupboard for tomorrow. After a tuna-sandwich supper, she listened to the news on television while sorting through her coupon drawer, and in doing so she discovered about twenty coupons that were but a day or two from expiration. Well, Jodie goes shopping in Oskaloosa tomorrow. Between her cart and Rita's, hardly a bargain will be lost.
Maybe she's restless from a day of sifting through things. Really, though, she just wants to see the kids. No one dropped by today, which is unusual but not unheard of. Whenever Mack goes more than a day without showing up, she goes to him. She tells herself that it's because of his recent rough spell. But mainly she needs to see her boy. It's just natural. He lives but a few miles away, and cold or not, Rita starts up her poor car and heads for the farm. It's late, but no one goes to bed early anymore now that the kids are teenagers.
When she turns down the long driveway, it is nearly ten at night, and every light in the house is onâlike an old factory with the late shift in full swing. In windows on both floors she can see their silhouettes: Kenzie in her bedroom, Jodie in the kitchen, and Mack in their bedroom upstairs. It should make Rita happy, seeing her family home at day's end. But even the unoccupied rooms are fully lit, and the house looks strangely alert, as if someone were very ill and other family members were trying to find medicine or extra blankets and
calling a doctor or the pastor. The outdoors has turned quite brisk since nightfall, and it's time for people to be snug under covers, not wandering around in confusion.
“Oh, Lord, Lord, what's going on?” The air bites at her joints when she gets out of the car. She sees Jodie look out the window in her direction, then move toward the back door. It opens before Rita reaches the steps.
“Mom, what are you doing out this time of night?”
“Oh, I found some coupons. You said you'd be going to town early tomorrow.”
Jodie doesn't respond to that. She could say,
And you're going with meâwhy drive out here now?
But that would miss the point entirely. The warm kitchen smells of garlic and applesâand maybe muffins of some kind. Rita has started coughing, and Jodie guides her to a chair at the table.
“That sounds awful. You're really congested.”
“Ohâ” Rita stops to take a better breath. She can hear the slight sound of her own chest whistling. “It's worse at night, you know.”
“Have you taken anything?”
“This afternoon I took one of those fizzy cold tablets. I think the date on them is old.”
“I've got some high-powered stuff.” Jodie has a glass in hand. She opens the narrow cupboard next to the window over the sink and picks through medicine bottles and small pieces of bubbled cardboard with colored pills encased in the plastic. “Here. This will help you sleep too.”
“Where are the kids?”
“Upstairs. Kenzie's got her nose in a book probably.” Jodie doesn't venture any ideas about Young Taylor. About all the boy does these days is listen to music and read magazines with names like
Industrial Nation
.
“What's Mack up to?”
Jodie seems preoccupied and doesn't answer.
“If he's up, I'll go say hello before I go.”
“How's the car doing? I'm surprised you'd bring it out this time of night.”
“It's just fine. That new starter did the trick.” Rita gets up from her chair and reaches around Jodie to put her glass in the dishwater. “I'll say hi to Mack.”
“He might be in bed.”
After all these years, Rita can sense when Jodie is withholding information, something she rarely does with Rita, even though she's pretty tight-lipped around people outside the family. The shape of her shoulders just now, when she is turned away from Rita, gives the impression of something gone wrong. Rita does her best not to grunt as her sore knees move her up the stairs. She walks past Kenzie's room; its door is shut, as is Young Taylor's. Rita can see the slit of light under the door to Mack and Jodie's bedroom. She steps up to it and taps lightly.
The door opens and Mack, fully dressed, looks at her in surprise. “Mom? Everything okay? Kind of late to be out.”
There are white dots at his cheekbones, the signal Rita feared. Those dots appear when he's upset. And his eyes hold the same desperation and great fatigue that glowered in them during the weeks prior to the hospital business.
“I'm fine, Mack. How about you?”
He doesn't answer. Just looks at her, his lips in a straight line.
“Are you feeling all right?” She stands ready to hear the worst. Lord knows, she tries to be an optimist, but so many times the worst has been exactly what she's had to hear.
“Oh, I've decided to take a little break.”
Rita can't make sense of that. “From what?”
He opens the door then, sighing a bit, and lets her in. There is his suitcase on the bed, open and half filled with clothes. It makes her think of those scenes in the movies when a couple has had a fight and one of them reaches up into the closet and pulls down a suitcase. Which is funny, because most suitcases are pushed back out of reach and covered with blankets or old clothes. And then when they're
opened, they've likely got other stuff inside themâwrapping paper, wool sweaters, or receipts and records a person is afraid to throw away. It's never as simple as one-two-three.
But here is Mack's suitcase, which he unpacked barely a month ago, when he got home from the hospital.
Rita tries to read his face for more information. “What's going on?”
He looks down the hall, toward the kids' rooms, and then closes the door and walks over to the bed. He sits on one side of the suitcase, Rita on the other. She looks at the rolled-up socks, the shirts neatly folded.
“I'm going out to the stone house for a while.”
“Why on earth?”
He shrugs, trying to make this a small thing. He's had that shrug since he was a toddler. “Just need some time to myself. Jodie and meâwe're both feeling a lot of pressure right now.”
She doesn't know what to say. Time to himself? Two weeks in the hospital wasn't enough?
“Well, you can't stay out there. It's nearly winter.”
“The stove still works. We used to stay out there all the time, fall and winter both.”
“But it's not set up for someone to stay more than a few days. There's no refrigerator, no real furniture that I can remember.”
“I'll pull together some things. I won't be there long.”
“If you need to get away, come to my place. I've got that extra bedroom. I'll just cook for twoâwould be a nice change.”
“No, I appreciate that, but I need this other thing right now.”
Rita picks up a pair of socks, unrolls them, and then rolls them back again. “Mack, you and Jodie can't split up so soon after this spell you've had. You've got to give it time. What does she think about this?”
“She's not real happy about it.” Mack looks at his hands. “But she wants me to doâ¦what I need to do.”
“Did you have a bad argument or something?”
“We're working on things.” Despite his worry dots, Mack appears to be quite calm. He makes a point to meet Rita's gaze. “We're okay.”
Rita looks back down at the suitcase. She sighs, but it turns into another fit of coughing.
“What are you doing out in this cold, coughing like that?” The shrugging toddler is her grown son again, trying to sound authoritative with her.
“I forgot to bring some things to Jodie today. I wasn't sleeping anyway.”
“Want me to drive you home?”
“No! The car is just fine. I drove here, and I'll drive back.” She gets up and goes to the door. “I don't like this, Mack. It can't be good for you to be out there by yourself.” She turns suddenly. “Does that counselor know about this?”
“Not yet.”
“Well, why don't you wait until you talk with him?”
Her son doesn't answer but ushers her out to the hallway. He walks her as far as the stairwell. They stop on the landing, surrounded by a history of the kids' school years, static smiles hung in patterns against the wallpaper.
“I'll come out there and bring you something to eat at least. I'll find some furniture for you too. Lord knows I've got too much for that little house of mine.”
“No need for that, Mom. I'll be fine.” His words echo down the stairwell, sounding confident.
Jodie is seated at the kitchen table, doing nothing. Rita sits down across from her. “What happened?”
“I don't know.”
“Did you have a fight?”
Jodie's glance tells her that this is a silly question. She and Mack have had fights for years. They fight, they make up. “Not lately, but I've known for a few weeks that he's unsettled.”
“Oh, Lordâ”
“Not like before. He swears he's not depressed, and he doesn't act like he is.”
“I don't think it's good for him to move out.”
“He's not going far. We'll still see him every day. I don't think we need to look at this as some major thing.”
“Well, I do.”
“He'll be fine, Mom.”
“Maybe you should go to counseling together.”
“I'm ready to go anytime he and the therapist think it's time.”
“Mack knows that?”
“Of course he does. Let me walk you out. Do you want Young Taylor to follow you into town?”
“No.” Rita can hear the anger in her own voice. It disturbs her to sound like this. She's upset more than angry, but she knows that she sounds angry and that Jodie will think she's decided this mess is all Jodie's fault.
The thought of Mack out there in that old house keeps Rita awake, although the cold medicine makes her groggy. She fixes herself some tea and decides to go ahead and write this new prayer in her little book, a prayer requesting that the Lord shake some sense into her son. And she wanders all through the house, even out to the garage, finding things to take out to the stone house tomorrow.
Mack
The next morning the kids are ready for school earlier than usual. On a typical day, Mack hears them sniping at each other in hoarse, waking-up voices while he sits downstairs and watches the early news out of Des Moines. But today they are nearly finished with breakfast when Mack sits at the table. Before leaving for the school cafeteria, Jodie fixed the coffee and put out the cereal and milk, as she always does. But when Mack sits down, he knows that the quiet at the table is unnatural, the sign of his kids waiting for another shoe to drop.
“Young Taylor, I'll need your help later today,” he says after a moment.
“Okay.”
Mack pours milk over the cereal. Young Taylor takes a bite of his, then says, “When?”
“After school. It won't take long. I need to move some things to the stone house.”
“What's going out there?” Young Taylor stares at the glass he's just emptied of milk, turning it in his hand as though to assess its value.
“The old sofa. The refrigerator from the garage.”
Kenzie looks at him for the first time, and he can see that she feels betrayed. Surely they know. Jodie probably told them last night after he went to bed. He decides to make it clear, just in case.
“I'll be staying out there for a while.”
They don't ask if he is going hunting. They don't ask him anything, just finish their breakfast and gather their things for school.
Well, no time would have been right for this. He made the decision weeks ago, after his blowout with Jodie over Kenzie's church business. But things kept happeningâextra busy at Hendrikson's, then he was in Ed's fields, helping get the corn in. And Young Taylor's attitude was particularly nasty for a few days. But last night Mack sat across from his wife after supper was cleared, and they looked at each other, and he could not form any sentences for her, or them. The pressure moved in on him from all sides, and he took a last gulp of coffee and didn't look at her when he spoke.
“Jo, I've gotta find some space somewhere. I'm no good to you here.”
Her face told him nothing; maybe there was a flicker of fear, or hurt, but he couldn't linger with it.
“Where do you want to be, Mack?”
“Close by, but just not here all the time.”
The stone house stands on the original Decker homestead. In 1854 Mack's forebears built a cabin there, on the higher bank of the stream, one of many little branches off the North Skunk River. The wife, Elda, insisted that they build near the water and in the woods. They'd moved over from Indiana, and she needed the feel of trees about her.
