The Year We Left Home (13 page)

“Should Matthew . . .”

“Oh sure. She’ll get such a kick out of him.”

Anita gathered him up. He wouldn’t let go of the rabbit cookie cutter, so it came along with him. The stairs were steep and hard to manage. Her mother was behind her, puffing a little. They wouldn’t be staying long, she was pretty sure.

Martha was propped up in bed on one of those backrests with padded sides. Her face was shrunken down in a way that made Anita think of a piece of fruit left out too long.

“Audrey,” Martha said. “And Anita. And who’s this young man?” She held out her long, bruised arms. Gauze pads were taped in place over each wrist. Her voice had sand in it, a rasp. She sounded like someone else.

“Matthew, say hello to Aunt Martha.” Now that Anita had seen her, and the dread of it was over, she felt oddly calm, energized, ready to be one of those skilled and helpful women who managed things at times of crisis. She’d seen what dying looked like now. It wasn’t as bad as she’d imagined.

“Now careful,” she said, propelling Matthew closer. “I don’t want him to kick you.”

“He won’t hurt me. And what would it matter if he did? Sit right here.” Martha patted the edge of the bed.

Anita sat, keeping Matthew on her lap. Anita figured they had thirty seconds or less before he started in fussing. Martha stroked his face and fine white hair. “What’s that you got there?”

“Bunny.”

“That’s right, it’s a bunny. He’s so big now.”

“Yes, he’s a handful,” Anita’s mother said. “How are you, Martha? You’re looking well.”

Martha didn’t answer, either because she hadn’t heard, or because it was a silly remark. Pat said, “Audrey and Anita brought us a week’s worth of food. Are you hungry? You can have your choice of vittles. And apple pie for dessert.”

“Maybe a little later.” Martha held out one hand. The skin over the knuckles was loose and rubbed-looking. “Can I see the bunny?”

He considered this, then let it drop into Martha’s hand. Martha said, “Here, you can have it back. Mommy can take it with you when you go.”

“Oh, he doesn’t need—”

“I’d like him to have it.”

None of them spoke, then Pat said, “I have to get you some more of that warming cream, for your feet. Her feet get real cold.”

Anita’s mother said, “I should have asked you if there was anything you needed from the Rexall.”

“No matter. Jane brings us whatever we need when she comes.”

“We’re a regular drugstore,” Martha said. There was an odd-shaped plastic table by the far side of the bed, designed to swing into place over Martha if that was wanted. It must have come from a medical-supply place. The table held Kleenex and Chap Stick and baby wipes and a water glass with a plastic straw and a hairbrush and comb and a man’s folded plaid handkerchief (Norm’s?) and a jar of Vaseline petroleum jelly and an emery board and any number of other things, and though it all had doubtless been recently tidied, it gave an impression of disorder, of items assembled for unhappy purposes. The room had a medicine smell. Nothing worse. Pat must work hard to keep it that way.

Matthew wanted to explore the bedspread, pick at the chenille tufts (the kind that left soft indentations on your face when you fell asleep on them), and Anita’s mother said she’d take him. He didn’t like her holding him and tried to turn himself upside down, as if falling on his head was the shortest route to the floor. He was probably
due for a bathroom trip. Anita said, “OK, Matthew, we’ll get you fixed up.”

Pat said, “Would he like to see the cows? I can take him out to the feed yard.”

Anita’s mother said to Martha, “We should let you get your rest.”

“That’s all I ever do is sleep.”

“Best thing for you.”

Martha shook her head. Her eyes closed. Probably because her face was so thin, her teeth looked overprominent, jutting out even behind her closed lips.

Pat made a sign. Anita started to rise from the bed, but Martha’s hand touched hers. “Stay a minute. Your mother can handle Matthew.”

“You’re sure—”

“Stay a minute.”

The others made their way downstairs. Anita wondered if Martha had fallen asleep. The skin of her eyelids was thin and discolored, like moth wings. Outside the window, the gray sky raced past. The room was smaller than you would have imagined for people of Martha’s and Norm’s size. The bed and dresser were bulky dark carved wood and took up even more of the space. The dresser was given over to Martha’s medicines, and a cardboard dispenser of latex gloves. Over the bed hung a picture frame enclosing a cross and two linked wedding rings. Anita stared at it. It embarrassed her although she couldn’t have said why.

Martha opened her eyes. “Here I am,” she said, as if she’d been away somewhere. And maybe she had. She turned her head toward the table, searching something out. Guessing, Anita reached for the water glass with the flexible straw and held it for Martha to drink.

“Do you want me to get you anything? Should I go get Pat?”

Martha shook her head. “It comes and goes.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Such a nuisance.” Martha’s voice was fainter but more like her own. “You break down like an old car.”

“Are you scared?” Anita was shy about asking. Maybe it was morbid, or rude.

“Was for a while. Then I got tired of it. You get tired of most things.”

Anita felt the tears starting up behind her eyes. “I was afraid to come see you.”

“Well who wouldn’t be?”

That made Anita laugh, or try to, and then she put her whole heart into her crying and sobbed out loud.

Martha touched her hair. “So pretty.”

“No I’m not. Not anymore. I’m an old sow.”

“You are no such thing.”

Anita took one of the Kleenex from the box and blew her nose. “Look at me carrying on. You’re the one who’s sick.”

“He’s a fine little boy.”

“How did you ever raise six children? I can’t imagine.”

“We didn’t know any better.”

Martha eased herself lower on the cushion. She was wearing a blue nightgown trimmed with a lace placket and embroidery. Anita suspected it was for company visits. Do you believe in heaven? In angels with wings? Do you think you’ll see Norm again, and the two of you will spend your time in some eternal version of Sunday church services? There were other questions Anita wanted to ask, but it was too late, and besides it might lead to a discussion of what she herself believed, which she preferred to keep vague. Anita would have said she believed in God, of course. Beyond that, she wasn’t sure. God was rather like the president, except that he was God and in charge of more things.

Anita said, “Mom cooked all this food and all I brought was some pumpkin bread.”

“I like pumpkin bread.”

“I wish I was like you.”

“Oh ho ho,” said Martha, as if this was a joke, although Anita hadn’t meant it as one. Was she fading out again? Anita hurried to get everything said.

“I wish I knew what I was supposed to do. What I want to do. I mean, except for Matthew, taking care of Matthew. I don’t know. You
always knew, didn’t you? Or maybe you didn’t have that much choice. Sometimes I feel like I ought to be more . . . happy,” she finished, but she didn’t mean happy, she meant something like “important,” which wasn’t quite right either.

“Well land’s sakes.” Martha said things like that,
Land’s sakes
and
I swan.
They were a kind of substitute for swearing. She shook her head with some of her old energy. “You have to do something about that. You don’t want to wait until you’re some old lady laid out in bed and everything past deciding.”

When Martha fell asleep again, Anita went downstairs. The others must still have been outside, amusing Matthew with the cows. She walked through the kitchen to the mudroom, where Norm’s old boots and coveralls still resided, and looked out the back door. The path to the cow barn and the old chicken coop was edged with bricks turned with their long sides against each other to make a sawtooth pattern. She didn’t see her mother or Pat and she was too tired and wrung out to walk out to the barn after them.

In the kitchen she found the tin of her mother’s chocolate chip cookies and ate four of them standing up, one right after the other.

They were going to have to start back soon. She found her coat and carried the empty boxes and baskets out to the car. Although it was the middle of the afternoon, it had got colder, the clouds breaking up to let a bit of no-color, glaring sunlight through. A front pushing in from the northwest, a sign of an early winter. She got into the car and started the engine to warm it up. Air whistled through the vents and a steady current of heat blew across her knees. The station wagon took forever to get warm. Jeff needed a nice car for business, by which was meant, a banker couldn’t be seen driving just any old heap. He’d probably explained ten different times today why he had the station wagon.

Say this really was her car, and she could go anywhere she wanted. She didn’t get very far with the thought, because she would have to go without Matthew, and that would never happen, and say she didn’t
take Jeff. Where would that leave her? It was a stupid thing to think about in the first place.

Pat and her mother and Matthew came into view at the far end of the lane. They must have walked all the way to the pasture and then around. Anita started to honk the horn, but then she thought of Martha sleeping, and instead put the car in gear to go meet them. Matthew wanted to run toward her; Pat held him back, both women telling him careful, careful, the car is coming, he didn’t want to get hit by the car, did he?

The driveway was bordered with a number of large, whitewashed rocks, another of Norm and Martha’s peculiar notions of ornament. She got a little speed up. Here comes Mommy Mommy Mommy! She gave the wheel the slightest touch, and the car leaped forward to smash into one of the rocks, a crunch sound that stopped everything dead, an impact that she felt in her shoulders and teeth.

They all ran toward her. She shut the engine off and got out to see. “Oh my Lord, are you all right?” her mother cried.

“Of course I am, silly. I was wearing my seat belt.” She walked around to the front of the car. There was a rock-shaped indentation in the wheel well, and the headlight drooped loose, connected only by its wires. “Boy,” she said. “Jeff is really going to have a fit, isn’t he.”

Mr. Milano
was a guidance counselor, not a real counselor. But he liked having these little chats. He thought something was wrong with everybody, and he was the only one smart enough to trip them up and show them just how screwed they were. “Victoria,” he said, “how’s it going?”

“I’m great, Mr. Milano. How are you?”

“Fine, thanks. Busy time of year, college applications and all.” Mr. Milano’s nickname was Super Pants, owing to a time when he had showed up at a football game wearing a pair of white trousers with the outline of his underpants clearly visible beneath.

“I’m working on mine,” Torrie said. “I’m almost done with the essay part.”

“And you plan on applying to . . .” He shuffled through her file for his notes.

“Sarah Lawrence, Bryn Mawr, Vassar, University of Michigan, Northwestern, UCLA, and Berkeley.”

“That’s a pretty ambitious list.”

She nodded. “Aim high.”

Mr. Milano smiled, sort of. You could feel sorry for him because he was kind of a dork and this was his first job and he’d come all the way
from St. Louis and here he was stuck in
Grenada.
Talk about aiming high. All the pencils in his pencil holder had chew marks. You could feel sorry for him until he started in on you. “Not that you don’t have excellent grades. And all your athletics, and activities. But these are very selective schools. How about a backup, in case your first choices don’t work out?”

“Like State? I don’t think so.”

“What do your parents say?”

Torrie shrugged. Her parents had no clue. “They just want me to be happy.”

“Have you figured out the finances? Out of state tuition, private tuition, that’s a big item.”

“Scholarships. Loans. Work-study. If I have to, I’ll stay home and get a job for a year and save money.” She had no such intention. She’d go to New York or Los Angeles and wait tables.

Mr. Milano pondered this, looking for the hole in her arguments. Torrie occupied herself with examining his hair, which was another source of wonder and delight to everybody in the school. His hair was black and a little greasy, and even though he was probably only about twenty-three or -four, he wore a comb-over to hide his receding hairline. This in spite of the hair that crawled out of his shirt collar and along the backs of his hands and no doubt other, even less appetizing places. Total dork.

Sometimes, without willing it, she imagined people naked, and the more she told herself not to do so, the more she couldn’t help it.

He said, “I’m a little worried that you’re making it too hard on yourself. Expecting too much.”

“You mean, girls aren’t supposed to be high achievers.”

“That’s not what I said. And it’s certainly nothing I believe.” He looked annoyed. It was something you could always say to guys like this, who thought they were so enlightened and down with the struggle and understood and sympathized with all the oppressed peoples of the earth. “What I meant was, you need to be flexible enough and mature enough to know that not everything works out as you plan.”

Once they started talking about maturity, it was your cue to get your butt out of there. “I am. I will. I promise I’ll think about some of the less selective schools. Could I be excused now? My great-aunt died and the wake’s tonight and I have to get home.”

He looked startled and a little guilty, as she had meant him to be. “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

“It’s OK. She was really old, and really sick. And now she’s with Jesus.”

He might have suspected her of putting him on, of mockery, but Torrie kept her face and voice absolutely serious, and even the new teachers knew better than to make fun of anything to do with Jesus around here. He told her she could go, and she gathered her books and turned toward the door.