On Shifting Sand (47 page)

My heart is sad and lonely,

For you I sigh, for you, dear, only.

Why haven’t you seen it?

I’m all for you, body and soul.

“Russ?” I murmur against his shirt.

“Hm?”

We are in a moment of such pure contentment that I hate the idea of spoiling it in any way, but if he is so lulled . . .

“I know Greg didn’t mean any offense.”

He kisses the hand he clasps. “I know.”

“But would you ever consider such a thing?”

He hushes me with a kiss and sings softly above my head:

I can’t believe it, it’s hard to conceive it,

That you’d turn away romance.

Are you pretending? It looks like the ending—

Unless I could have

Just one more chance to prove, dear.

Russ pulls back, smiling at the irony of the lyrics, given the closeness of this moment.

“Oh, Russ.” I lift my hands to his shoulders, running my fingers through the thick waves above his collar. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful, though? To have one more chance?”

“One more chance for what, dear?” He poses the question as if it were a missing lyric.

“A new, fresh, clean start. Someplace where there’s life.”

“There’s life here.” And he kisses me.

“Not beyond these walls.”

“Once upon a time,” he says in the silence between two numbers, “God gave me a very clear directive to come home, and I realized he hadn’t given me instruction to go away in the first place. I won’t make this kind of decision based on a photograph of a house, especially one that isn’t mine.”

“But it’s—”
half mine,
I was going to say.

“We will wait. We will wait upon the word of the Lord. And I promise you, I will listen for his answer.”

The onset of spring not only brings the winds howling with new fervor, it also brings the long-awaited School Spring Musicale. As an older student, and a boy to boot, Ronnie has been primarily concerned with building and painting sets for the other students’ numbers—trees and castles, and large cardboard animals for the “Animal Crackers” song, in which Ariel has a solo. We have been listening to her practice nonstop
for weeks, each rendition convincing us that she was chosen to sing it as a redheaded Shirley Temple rather than a girl with equal vocal ability. Still, she, along with the others, makes a valiant effort, dancing among the bouncing cardboard zoo. Merrilou helped me cut down one of her old white dresses for the snowflake song, and every student—including the big boys, who stand awkwardly, hats in hand—come onstage for the final song: “Home, Sweet Home.”

We are all seated on metal folding chairs, swept up in the earnest offering of our children, wishing we had more to offer them. Most of us, at least those native to Oklahoma, grew up with lush green grasses, enough wheat to feed three countries, dew-drenched mornings, and miles of earth fed by rain. When I was little, I wore store-bought dresses to school, stockings made of silk. We gorged ourselves on ice cream and beefsteak. Now, we watch our darlings, our little girls in white dresses made of bleached flour sacks. Our boys with dirt caked in their necks and fingers. Not a single child onstage has the fat, pinchable cheeks that children should have. They sing with hungry mouths.

Be it ever so humble, there’s no place like home.

They repeat the short chorus three times before Mrs. Patty motions from her piano bench, inviting all in the audience to rise and sing with the children. Russ and I stand and link arms, but I cannot bring myself to sing. Instead, I listen, because coming through the noise of the piano, and the muddled voices of the children, and the resonant tone of the audience, a single discordant sound enters.

A cough.

This alone is nothing out of the ordinary. The dust has disguised itself as the air we breathe, coating our mouths and throats, so lodged in the dryness that we have no option but to expel it by force. No conversation happens without a clearing of a throat. No silence is ever left unbroken. But this is different. Severe, and familiar.

I stand on my toes, scanning the stage, knowing in the deepest part of me which child I will see in the midst of a spasm, because I’ve been hearing this sound—
this cough
—for days, at least, and have made it no more than a part of the other noise in my life.

Being the littlest, a tiny kindergartner in a pond of bigger children, my Ariel is right out front, in the center, her small, pale hands cupped to her mouth, trying to stifle her cough so she can return to singing. Even from here I see her face flushed with fever. Has she been sick all day? Did I feel the heat emanating from her as I brushed each perfect curl? Perhaps I attributed her heightened color to her excitement for the program she worked so hard to prepare. From the stage, her voice rings out sweetly, but without the vigor of her home performances. Her dancing has less spring, her eyes a familiar glaze.

Stage fright, nerves, overexcitement—all buried my instinct.

I pull on Russ’s sleeve. “She’s sick. Go get her, now.”

He gives my hand a placating pat. “This is the last song. After it’s over.”

“Now.” I push him, and as the final notes fade uneasily away, Russ makes his way through the crowd, up the crowded aisle. The moment one of the younger boys presents Mrs. Patty with a small bouquet of roses, the children are dismissed. They file off the sides of the stage, moving as one shuffling creature, but not my Ariel. She stands, still and small, in the middle of the stage, and drops into her father’s arms.

I wipe the tub three times with a Lysol-soaked rag before running a tepid bath, and then I sit beside her as she shakes, and tell her again and again how beautiful she was onstage.

“Like a real snowflake,” I say, gathering her hair up off her neck. “Gave me the shivers.”

“Marion Childers had the prettiest dress.”

“But you had the prettiest voice. And how brave to sing and dance when you weren’t feeling well.”

She coughs in response, wet and familiar.

I pat her dry with a towel and drop a clean flannel gown over her head before carrying her to her room.

“Papa will come in with some water in a minute,” I say, draping a blanket over her shivering body, “and for prayers. We’ll all pray that you feel better tomorrow.”

I kiss her burning brow and cheek and hand her a favorite doll. Barney leaps up and curls herself on the corner of the bed and begins lazily licking her paw. Soon the sound of her purring fills the room.

In the kitchen, Russ has prepared a tray with a glass of water, an aspirin, and a new card of paper dolls he’s been saving as a reward for after the program.

“We have to take her to the hospital,” I whisper. “Tonight.”

“Not tonight. Not in the dark. We’ll see if her fever is worse in the morning.”

Perhaps I should be comforted by his calm, but I find myself furious instead.

“This is not a time to sit around and wait. I think she’s been sick for days, but trying to hide it so we wouldn’t keep her from being in the show.”

“Remember, darling, I spent quite a bit of time at the hospital, and I don’t know that they would do a lot for her there that we can’t do here.”

“But what about the tent? The oxygen? Remember, when I was there, that woman—Ladonna—she was taken for a time to get that treatment.”

“Some it helps,” he says, before taking my hand to finish his sentence, “and some it doesn’t. Ariel’s blessed with a windowless room and a mother who keeps the house as meticulously clean as possible.”

“But she’s still—”

“It might be just a cold. Or a mild flu, or a host of other things. The danger of taking her outside for a three-hour car ride would, I think, do more harm than good.”

Now, at last, his even tone, his weighty assurance, his measured words—all work to soothe my spirit.

“I’ll make some Jell-O. So it will be ready for her in the morning.”

He kisses my brow. “Good girl. And then join us for prayers.”

I set the kettle to boiling on the stove and pour the powdered gelatin into a mixing bowl, praying as I never have before. As I do, Ronnie comes in, having been given permission to stay out later with his friends and stack all the chairs in the gymnasium in return for a school-free afternoon later the next week. Like any other entrance, he heads straight for the kitchen and opens the icebox, retrieving bread and butter and sugar for a late snack.

I say nothing other than the sharpest bits of conversation, handing him a knife, telling him to use a plate. “Crumbs will bring the mice out. Bad enough we have to live with all this dirt; don’t need mice, too.”

“How else are we going to keep Barney fat?” His cheeks are stuffed with bread and sweet butter, barely enough room to flash his father’s grin at me.

“Do you let Ariel walk to school without her mask?”

“What?” Food muffles the word.

“You heard me. It is your responsibility to walk with her, and your responsibility to make sure that she wears her mask. And she doesn’t, so now she’s sick.”

He works to swallow the enormous bite, and chases it with milk I’ve poured in a glass.

“She does, almost every day, I swear.”

“Don’t swear.”

“I promise.”

“Don’t
promise
what you know is a lie.”

“Ma!”

That single syllable crushes me. I am the only liar in this house, and here he stands, defending an innocence I have no right to question. Ariel isn’t his responsibility; she is mine, though he good-naturedly accepts every instance where I foist her upon him.

“I’m sorry,” I say, tending to the boiling water in the teapot. “I’m worried, is all.”

“How sick is she?” His worry blends with mine. “Like Paw-Paw?”

“Let’s hope not.” The gelatin dissolves bright red in the bowl, and I look to the clock. Two minutes to stir.

“Do you want me to do that?” He comes up from the table before I can answer. “So you can go sit with her?”

I transfer the spoon to his hand, ignoring the dirt collected in his knuckles. “Another minute, and then two cups of cold water. All right?”

“Ma, I’ve seen you make this a hundred times.”

Although I’ve been freed from my duty, I stay and wrap my arms around him, impeding his ability to stir. For a moment, I need his strength, the vibrancy of his youth, and a measure of affection he so rarely affords.

“I love you, Ronnie.”

“I love you too, Ma.”

“You’re the best son a mother could ask for. You’re going to be big and strong, just like your father.”

“But I ain’t going to be a preacher like him.”

The moment is too sweet to correct his grammar. “What are you going to be?”

He shrugs against me. “I don’t know yet, but anything that will get me away from here.”

I release him, and he continues stirring. “You know, I said the same thing to my father, starting when I was about your age.”

“Yeah? Well, don’t take offense, Ma, but I think I mean it more than you ever did.”

I feel his words follow me to Ariel’s room, where her father kneels beside the bed. She sits up, her nightgown puddled around her waist, and leans forward as Russ applies Vicks VapoRub along the length of her back. Settling her half-upright on a pillow, he does the same to her chest, filling the room with the distinctive odor. He then lays a clean white cloth against her skin and helps her push her skinny arms through the sleeves of her nightgown, leaving it unbuttoned to the waist.

“Breathe deep,” he says. “As deep as you can, even if it hurts.”

She tries, and does well, both of them pleased at her shuddering determination.

“Now, drink this.” He holds a glass to her lips, and she grimaces.

“It’s warm.”

“It has to be, so it’s the same temperature as your insides.” He lays a cool cloth against her brow. “Now, let’s say our prayers.”

She coughs in response, and I move to sit beside him. Faithful Barney doesn’t move, and soon the shadow of her brother fills the room.