Orchard (7 page)

That memory of Sonja standing in the rain revived his desire, but of course she was not there, at his side, and no matter how swiftly Henry might gallop back to her, he knew his passion would subside as soon as he led Buck into his stall. Henry wondered if he would ever again have an erection strong enough to survive the walk from the barn to the house.

He reached for another beer, pulling the bottle from the ice with his thumb and two fingers.
Like this. Like this. Like this.

Sometime in the
weeks and months after her brother’s death, June House realized she had a new job: She had to watch her father and mother to make sure they didn’t drift in the direction of the far-off look in their eyes and become lost forever. And almost as soon as she knew this was a job she alone could perform, she realized she had already failed at half of it— her dad was away from home as much as he was there, and every night June fell asleep to the worry that the next morning he would be gone for good.

But June could not keep watch every moment, and when she decided to attend the St. Adalbert’s Carnival with the Engerson family, she became more and more nervous the longer she was away. Yes, she had fun, but then she felt guilty because she had forgotten for a few hours that sorrow had taken up residence in her home, and from then on she couldn’t wait to return. It was close to midnight when the Engersons pulled up in front of her house, and June was so eager to get out of the station wagon the she forgot to hold on to the string of her helium balloon.

The balloon, as if it had a mind that understood the meaning of escape, flew from the car and into the night sky. June’s step faltered, but only for an instant. Almost immediately, she became reconciled to her loss and continued running toward the house.

When she woke the next morning, she discovered that her balloon was not gone, not entirely. Its string had tangled in the high branches of the maple, and there the balloon was caught, bobbling in the wind and bumping against the scarlet leaves. June knew the balloon would not hold its air, nor could it be retrieved from that height, yet in a way she still possessed it. After all, the balloon was still on the property, even though it was available only to sight. She felt the same way when she saw her father’s jacket by the back door or smelled the smoke from his cigarette or heard the
thunk
of his boots on the stairs—any sign that he still lived in their home. Her relief, however, lasted only until the next time he walked out the door.

But even if June could not keep her father there, she could still be a maple branch for her mother, snagging her when she started to go away. June knew the signs. In the midst of an activity—chopping vegetables, sewing a button, drying a glass—her mother’s hands would suddenly stop, the knife poised over the celery stalk, the towel stuck in the glass. Her eyes would lose their focus, and she seemed to be listening to a sound only she could hear. June developed special tricks to keep her mother there, in the moment. June would turn up the volume on the radio. “This song, Mama, do you like this song?” And then for a few minutes they would listen to Nat King Cole sing “Pretend” or Eddie Fisher “O Mein Papa.” June drew and colored picture after picture for her mother, scenes of forests and lakes, sunsets and lightning storms. But June found the very best way to bring her mother back to the present was by way of the past.

“Mama!” June called. “What’s the Norwegian word for ‘school’?”

After a moment, Sonja answered, “
Skole.
But the school you attend is
grunnskole.
Elementary school.”

“What about ‘doll’? How do you say ‘doll’ in Norwegian?”

“Dukke.”

“And did you have one—a doll? Did you have a doll when you were a little girl in the old country?”

“I had a little boy doll that was almost flat because I took him to bed with me, and I slept on him.”

“Did you give your doll a name?”

Sonja laughed, and June knew she had done what she set out to do. “Oskar,” Sonja said. “I named him Oskar, after a boy who lived up the road.”

Then June might wince—how could she have been so stupid as to ask a question that wound around to the subject of a little boy!—and she would rush to move her mother in another direction: “Did you have to leave your doll behind when you got on the boat to come to America?”

Had June blundered again—leading her mother to the topic of abandonment—and didn’t her mother feel, didn’t they all feel, that they had abandoned John, left him alone in the land of the dead? Oh, on some days every trail seemed to end at her brother’s grave!

But June needn’t have worried. Her mother smiled that smile that said she was wholly there, there in the kitchen with June at that late-afternoon hour when the sun finally harried the shadows from the room’s far corner.

At the MFA
exhibit of June House-Chen’s oils and acrylics, the large painting of a balloon caught in the branches of a tree drew the most comment. The balloon, its slack, creased surface rendered so it resembled human skin, commanded not only the viewer’s eye but seemed the element in the picture that had the greatest force, as if it were the trees that were mostly air and required balloons to anchor them, tether them, pull their trunks straight, and unfurl their foliage.

Certainly the painting—a canvas the size and dimension of a door— belonged to the surrealist tradition, yet because of the way the tree and balloon were centered on the panel, the painting looked as if it might be a family’s crest or coat of arms, its motto
Nihil est quid videtur,
“Nothing is what it seems.”

Henry walked through
the back door just after dark. He had missed another meal, and he had not called to explain why, where he was, or when he might come home, but this was behavior Sonja had grown accustomed to. More and more frequently he came home late or else he rose from the table immediately after eating and went out to the barn. He saddled Buck and rode for hours—or so he said—through the orchards. Whether she was in bed when he came home or, as now, standing over the sink shelling peas, she often smelled beer on his breath.

This time he didn’t say anything to her when he came in. He simply walked up behind her, put his hands on her hips, and buried his face in her neck as if he meant to inhale her whole.

She lifted her shoulder to push his face away. Since that night when Henry refused her, she had begun to think he might be right: In the aftermath of a child’s death, it was best to deny oneself any pleasure.

But now Henry would not be deterred. He simply abandoned the side of her neck for her back. He lifted her hair and began to kiss the top vertebra, reasoning, perhaps, if he could win over that one spot then the rest of her spine would relax and she would relent.

Sonja slid away from him and shook her head to make sure her hair covered her neck once again. Why now? The supper dishes were not dry. There was still light in the western sky. June was playing in the living room.
Why now?
She would have asked this aloud, but she could not entirely trust her voice to keep a moan out of the question.

Henry persisted. He followed her along the kitchen counter, and when Sonja turned to face him—ostensibly to tell him this was neither the time nor the place—he simply took that as an invitation to help himself to another part of her. His hands came up to her breasts, and he pressed his kisses so hard against her collarbone she felt his teeth.

She asked him to stop, but he did not, perhaps because she whispered her plea into his deaf ear, and perhaps because her body gave lie to her request. She leaned back against the cupboard, leaving herself open to his urgent caresses.

He didn’t try to unbutton the four imitation pearl buttons at the top of her housedress. Instead, he plucked at them as if they were tight little blossoms that would somehow open in his fingers.

Sonja knew they should not go on, yet for another moment she let him continue, all the while keeping her eyes open to make sure June didn’t appear in the doorway.

When Henry tried to lift the hem of her dress, however, she had to push him away. “Hsst! What are you doing—with your daughter in the next room!”

Henry still said nothing but simply came toward her again. She knew she could not allow him to corner her in the kitchen, and when she slipped past him this time, she kept right on going, out the back door and to the porch.

The night air felt as steamy as the kitchen had hours earlier when she stood over a sink of close-to-scalding dishwater. There was no wind, yet she grabbed hold of the porch post as if the house could pitch like the ship that brought her to this country.

Henry tried to tug her loose, and when he couldn’t he too grabbed the post, encircling Sonja with his arms and pressing himself hard against her.

After John died, Sonja wanted no one to speak to her. She did not want anyone to try to make things better for her with words when it was plain no language contained such words. Yet now she wanted speech from Henry—say anything, she thought, and I’m yours, even here, now, clinging to this post.

The literal terms of her wish were granted. “Come with me,” he said, and she let him take her by the hand, keeping herself ready to yank free if he tried to pull her toward the barn.

He did not. Only grief could have kept them away when every impulse of the blood wanted them to move toward one of those piles of straw.

Between the barn and a small shed that had once been a chicken coop was a tree stump almost three feet high and with a top the size of a small table. The farm’s previous owners had used the stump as a chopping block—the blood of chickens who there lost their heads still stained the wood—but Henry used the surface to split logs and cut up kindling.

It was to the stump that Henry brought Sonja. He sat down and pulled her onto his lap, arranging her dress in such a way as to cover them and conceal what Henry hoped to do.

Not only did Sonja raise no objection, she rearranged her undergarments so Henry could enter her. The only concession she made to propriety was to move them around on the stump so she could watch the house over Henry’s shoulder.

When they finished, it was Sonja who led them back to the house, one hand holding her skirt up between her legs like a diaper.

13

“Now, I’m not going to touch you,” Weaver said, as he unbuttoned his shirt, “but I’m going to undress and lie down beside you.”

He took off his shirt and held it up against the sky. The chambray was so worn that it barely filtered the light, yet it was also dotted and smeared with paint, and these splotches blocked the sun completely. Weaver’s art had always been representational, but lately it seemed as though he had been seeing more and more possibilities for abstract works. And what would Weaver do for a shirt-inspired painting—try to approximate on canvas the sun-whitened blue of his shirt dotted with a palette of colors? Or would the shirt itself be the work, gallery-hung and brightly backlit to simulate sunlight?

Weaver unbuckled his trousers. “I’m doing this because I not only need to know what you look like lying in the sun, I need to know what it feels like.”

Weaver and his model were alone on the beach, but Sonja still moved her naked body over a foot or two as though she were making room for him on the sand. Or was she trying to tell him not to lie too close? She lay on her stomach, as Weaver had instructed her to do, but she turned her head away from him as though she did not want to see him naked.

“If I just stand back and draw and paint you from a distance,” Weaver continued, “I’m working only with my eyes. I have to find ways to involve the other senses. Otherwise the work’s dead. A goddamn pretty picture. Nothing more. I tried something like this once before. Someone sat for me, and the entire time I worked on her portrait, we were both naked.” He was aware that he was rambling, but he feared that if he stopped or slowed down, she might object to what he was doing.

Only someone in a boat, cruising the bay and veering dangerously close to shore, or—even more improbable—someone in an airplane, flying too low, would be able to see Weaver and his model. They lay on a private beach, a stretch of sand so fine it seemed sifted, on property owned by Edith Shurman, art collector and heiress to the Shur-Fit Auto Parts fortune. She and Weaver were friends, and she had given him permission to wander as he pleased on her grounds, fenced off so the public had no access to the beach or the acres of woods surrounding her home.

When Weaver lowered himself facedown, the hot sand molded itself to his body and yet gave slightly under his weight. He imagined he was lying in the depression Sonja’s body made, and his cock stirred at the thought.

“As a child,” Sonja said, “I used to confuse sand and the sea.”

He was unaccustomed to her starting a conversation, and her willingness to speak, even though her voice traveled out toward the water, almost made him rush the moment and reach out to touch her. He remembered, however, the vow of patience he had taken months before; he could screw himself into the sand and wait a little longer.

“You confused the words?” he asked. “Or was the confusion in your eye? I remember the first time I visited the ocean. I couldn’t get used to what seemed to be the sight of the sand rushing out to sea.”

“No, no. I thought—I knew the sea was salt. I tasted it. And when my father came home from his day out on his fishing boat, in his—what do you call them? In his face? Folds? Wrinkles? In the wrinkles on his face and in his hair would be lines and grains of white—salt from the sea and the wind. So then when I walked on the beach I thought the sand was salt, tossed up by the ocean. This was when I was very young, but I still get them a little mixed up in my mind. Like when I hear the expression ‘salt of the earth’—I think ‘sea of the earth’? That makes no sense.”

“The sand of your beaches must have been very white.”

“I think maybe our salt was not so white.”

Weaver laughed and then realized she may not have been joking. “Where did you grow up?”

“Takla. A small fishing village on the northwest coast of Norway. When fishing was poor, life there was very hard.”

“And life here?” Weaver asked. “With the lake all around—does it remind you of your childhood home?”

She said nothing for a long time, and Weaver wondered if she had fallen asleep. A gull hovered then landed on a flat rock nearby. It picked up its feet a few times, as if it had to adjust to the stone’s hot surface. When it swiveled its head in Sonja’s direction, she began to speak again.

“In our village there was a man whose son begged to fish with his father’s fleet. The father finally gave in, though everyone knew this boy was too young to do a man’s work. On his first day on the ocean, a great storm rose and the boy—who was not on his father’s boat because the father did not want to favor his child—was washed overboard.

“The father never fished again, but he kept going out to sea. He rowed out alone in a small boat, and then pulled in the oars and sat there, drifting and bouncing on the waves. From the shore we watched him. Everyone said he was looking for his son, and each day he searched farther and farther out. Soon he was beyond the rocks, and people whispered that someday he would not return in the evening with the other boats. When that day came, my mother, who wanted every story to end happily, said to my brothers and me so we would not be frightened by too much death in our little village, ‘Einar has found his boy. . . .’ ”

Sonja fell silent, and the gull, as if it knew there was nothing more to the story, blinked its black oily eye and then jumped into flight. The lake made small sipping sounds among the rocks, and under the heat of the sun Weaver felt the skin along his backside tighten like a drumhead. He was burning, he knew, but he did not change his position or speak. He wondered if there was anything he could do but wait with this woman.

Since she began posing for him, Weaver felt as though he had produced some of his finest work, yet his frustration had also increased, as if he were incapable of reaching a new, higher standard that this model set for him.

Sonja raised up on her elbows and turned to look at Weaver. Sand stuck to her breast, and while he watched, the grains began to drop away, but slowly, as if she and nature had concocted a little striptease. “Have you lay here long enough?” she asked. “Do you know now what it feels like to be me?”

The following day,
Weaver returned to the beach alone, and he brought with him the necessary materials for working on either an oil or a watercolor. His idea was this: He would take a pinch of sand from the spot where Sonja had lain, and he would mix the grains into the swirled paint on his palette. If he were moved to work on a watercolor, he would use lake water as a wash and as a rinse for his brushes.

The night before, as Weaver lay in a cool bath drinking gin and trying to soothe his sunburn, he decided that Sonja had somehow crossed a boundary. Without either of them willing it to be so, the model had passed from inspiration to control, and Weaver would not be controlled—not in society, not in his marriage, and certainly not in his art.

Therefore, the work that Weaver began that day—an oil, as it happened—was of a stretch of sand without a human being on it.

And yet as empty as that beach was, the completed painting is full of—is there any other word for it?—presence. Those wide, flat, sun-bleached and waterworn stones seem to be waiting for the next bird to land or for the next foot to step down to the lake’s edge. The sand is as rippled and scalloped as water on a windy day. But look again—wouldn’t some of those dents and impressions in the sand conform themselves exactly to the concavity of a woman’s breasts or thighs? The brushstrokes themselves seem to shimmer, a perfect joining of subject—the sun scorches almost all the blue from the cloudless sky—with emotion; certainly the artist as he painted blazed with more than the sun’s heat.

The only tranquillity in the painting comes from the lake itself, so calm that any boat that might once have stirred the surface has drifted far from sight.

The work is titled “Absence and Desire.”