Читать книгу Twister - Genanne Walsh - Страница 14

It was a three-minute drive to the neighboring farm, and a thirty-minute walk. Nina walked. She wanted time to figure out how to handle Rose.

At the bank earlier that morning, when Louise Logan had asked after Rose, Nina hadn’t known how to answer. She had seen her neighbor only once, right after the news about Lance, in a stilted visit to deliver flowers and meatloaf. Since then Rose had shut herself off—and the short, shameful answer was that Nina didn’t know how she was.

Warmth from the black macadam drifted up her pant legs. Canned pears and seven single-serving plastic containers of bean chili thunked against the small of her back, shifting in her tote bag. The mid-morning sky was bright, a few cirrus clouds belying the storm condition notices. Storm-warners, doomsayers, people who held sway over your life with words words words, never actions. They’d been wrong before—but they’d been right sometimes, too. Nina pulled the tote closer, and pears sloshed in their syrup. Yellow wildflowers sprouted in the spring grass by the edge of the road, turning up their faces like little portents of happiness.

It stuck in Nina’s craw that Louise Logan, of all people, had guilted her into visiting. Louise, with her dyed chestnut pageboy swishing around a jawline that didn’t need accentuating, and her wet, bright eyes watching too intently. She reminded Nina of a vole—something that tunneled, that sat perfectly still, jaw working and working, looking behind you to see what else was there, and then darting under for reasons known only to her. Now here Nina was, sent on a mission by a woman she didn’t like, to check up on a woman who didn’t like her.

A mailbox rose up, rusty along the seams, its flag stuck into an upright position. Rose’s driveway was narrower than she remembered. It looked spat out from among the tangly branches like a half-digested chickenbone. Nina stepped up the driveway, making a mental list of chores she could ask the Old Man to do at home, to keep him busy and out of Perry’s hair. The less those two crossed paths the better. Could she send him over here to repaint Rose’s mailbox? She ruled out that idea—he hadn’t come to Rose’s place in years.

The house appeared around a final bend. Its shingles and tilting chimney were jagged against the sky, and the whole place looked like it could give you a black eye. A crow cawed, flying in an ungainly path toward the barn. Nina crossed the creaky porch to the front door and knocked, but there was no answer so she went around back. Curls of peeling paint sprinkled the porch floor.

“Rose,” she called, rapping on the screen door. “You home?” She looked around the yard. No sign of life. She peered through the screen into the kitchen to call again. A putrid smell came from inside. She set the tote bag at her feet, wondering where to leave it. It would be fine on the porch for an hour or two. But where was Rose? And what was that smell? What if Rose had—.

Nina pushed the screen open. “Hello?”

The source of the stink was clear as soon as she entered: the trashcan overflowed, and dirty dishes cluttered the counters and table. Nina made a spot for her bag and pulled out the items that needed to go into the refrigerator. She opened the fridge door and stood, honest to God stunned. It was a tinfoil shrine. At least ten casserole dishes, untouched, in varying stages of moldy putrescence. A gallon of chunky milk. Something furry in a produce bag. On the door, lidless slimy jam and pickle jars, and one pristine stick of butter.

Here was the answer to Louise’s question. Lord, Rose. Rose, you’re what, ten years older than me? You can’t be losing it, you just can’t, you have to pull it together. She shut the fridge door and went to the living room, calling Rose’s name.

Nina walked quietly through the rest of the house, as if to lessen the impact of her intrusion. Upstairs, she paused outside the shut door that had been Lance’s room. Touched the wood. Then moved on. Rose’s bedroom was empty. Down the back staircase, the sewing room had a twin bed that looked like it had recently held a body; cans of corn were stacked in a pyramid in the corner. The dusty parlor was strangely warm, and she paused in front of the mantel. Five black feathers fanned out above the fireplace with a thorny branch of dried rosehips—the makings of some decorative arrangement in the underworld.

A family photo hung crooked above the mantel: Rose and her late husband Theo sat on either side of Lance. The boy looked like an imp, a sprite—a spirit that hadn’t left him even after he was a lanky teen, knocking on her back door to take a walk with Sill. In the photo he was about four, his face screwed into a toothy smile, brown hair falling into his eyes. On Lance’s right, Theo leaned back as if anticipating a blinding flash. Rose looked solid, her hands folded in her lap, staring straight into the camera like she could bore through and touch the other side.

A presence seemed to breathe into the house—was that the screen door whining? Nina put a hand to her throat and turned around. “Rose?” How will she bear it? she had asked Perry when the news had broken. If she walked to the backyard she’d surely find that spirited little boy from the photo sitting in the dirt with Sill and a hose, making mudpies.

Nina hurried back to Rose’s kitchen. The screen door wasn’t quite shut, so she pulled it tight in its frame. On the fridge door two strawberry-shaped magnets held a sheet of paper, folded in half. A faint etching of black ink pressed through the white sheet. Nina unclipped it and unfolded the page. Now she was just snooping. Louise Logan would be proud. She ignored her trembling fingers. Her daughter’s name ran bold and black across the top of the paper—it was an email that Sill had printed out, dated five months back. The subject line read “For my mom.”

Dear Ma—My best girl says she’ll pass this message on to you. I haven’t had time to write a paper letter. How are you? The food here is terrific (not!) as ever and it’s been real hot. I wish I could time travel back for the weekend for some good food. Damn that I don’t have super powers—ha, ha. Don’t worry about me, we are careful. How is Fergus? I’ll write more next week. Maybe even pick up a real pen? Better go, there’s a country that needs saving (oh boy). Love, Lance.

Nina refolded the paper and returned it to its place on the fridge. Sill had never told her she relayed emails to Rose, but it made sense. Her daughter was locked now in a dance with Rose that Nina couldn’t follow. Sill had been as in love as a girl could be at sixteen. Nina remembered her own youthful passion with Perry, wrenching and electric, and cursed Lance for mixing it up with Sill before heading off to war. Then, just as fast, she grabbed the cross around her neck and offered up a quick plea for forgiveness. And for Rose—a prayer for her too, not that she’d want Nina’s prayers.

All told, Nina was in Rose’s empty house for almost two hours. She lugged out the trash, filled the sink with soapy water and washed the dishes stacked in it, then the pots lining the counters. Holding her nose, she emptied everything from the fridge—pouring liquids down the drain, scraping solids into the garbage can, and took out the trash again. She scoured every casserole dish and scrubbed the fridge shelves, and then found some baking soda to set inside it. She washed Fergus’s food bowl, filled his water dish, and swept the floor. Then she set her chili in the sparkling fridge, leaving the canned pears on the table, and took a piece of paper from the shelf under the phone.

Dear Rose,

I stopped by today and I apologize for letting myself in, but I brought some chili that had to go into the fridge. I also brought some fruit I canned. We had too much. I hope you enjoy it. I was very sorry to miss you.

Rose, I am so sorry for what has happened. I pray for Lance every day. Sill cries in her room--Sill is heartbroken Sill misses him too.

She sat, staring out the window. What more was there to say?

I’m sorry we aren’t closer, Rose, the way we used to be. I have no good excuse, other than—Can you ever—Just because I have their name doesn’t mean I’m like them. Will you please call me to let me know you got this?

Yours truly,

Just as she was going to make a clean copy and sign her name, an engine rumbled into the yard. Rose’s truck. Nina knew the sound of that old junker. Stupidly, she hadn’t checked the side of the house where it was usually parked. Rose had just gone to town, out driving, running errands like any normal person—she didn’t want Nina’s charity.

Nina leaped up from the table. Her chair clattered onto the floor, note fluttering after it. The pen she’d found in a drawer near the phone rolled off the table toward a crack by the baseboards. She grabbed her tote bag and rushed out the back door, rounding the house and cutting through shrubs toward the low wall that separated the yard from the fields. Then she chucked the bag over the wall and scrambled after it into the corn. Behind her, the hayloft leaned at a funny angle and a bird minced from one corner of the eaves to another.

Nina half-jogged home, only pausing when she hit the base of the hill. The Brown house was the only place for miles with a view—a sloping elevation starting just past the old carriage barn and leveling off twenty feet above ground. Who had the luxury, in the old days, of using horses for any purpose other than working the fields? For that was how Perry’s great-grandfather, Elias Brown, had done it: hitched up the horses to push dirt into this homemade hill. Then he packed it down hard. Earth heaped as a pedestal, out of hubris or spiritual symbolism or just a desire to look down at the neighbors. The house appeared reproachful to Nina. She felt utterly ridiculous, dodging Rose like that. It was cowardly. She took a breath, not ready to go inside. The Old Man would be there and Sill wouldn’t. Nina walked into the yard, stepped into her garden shed and clicked the latch tight.

The shed smelled of good, clean dirt. It was the one place entirely her own—her labels on the neatly ordered shelves, her carefully chosen seed packets sealed in airtight plastic containers. Perry and his Old Man argued about how to handle their hundreds of acres, but the vegetables that they ate most every night—those were hers. Nina puttered to collect herself, letting her sweat cool and dry. She pulled a container of seed packets from the shelf and flipped through, planning what to sow once the rabbit fence was fixed, feeling steadied by each decision she made.

Slipping a seed packet into her pocket, she picked up a trowel and went to the garden. The southeast corner of the fence had succumbed to the thumping feet of hungry rabbits. Nina’s carrots and crunchy romaine were the first to go. Now they’d had most of her baby spinach and lemon cucumbers. She pulled the damaged plants, tossing them into a bucket. Then she sat in the cleared space. It was still humid, and the sky felt a shade less bright. The few sprouts the rabbits had left behind bent toward the dirt—a sign of threatening weather. Nina crouched to look at the indentation her butt had made. She poked a dozen holes into each moon shape, sprinkling in some arugula seeds and patting the dirt back into place, and then pulled out the hose to soak the soil. Arugula was peppery and bitter. Perry and the Old Man pushed it around on their plates, but she and Sill liked it, and best of all, it grew like a weed—the rabbits let it be.

In the laundry room, she slung her braid away from her hot neck, peeled off her dirty sweatshirt, and washed her hands and face. The lunch hour had come and gone. She strode to the kitchen, pulled out the orange juice and paused, listening for sounds upstairs. Nothing. She took a long drink, cold and sweet from the carton.

The downstairs bathroom door bashed against the wall. “Storm’s coming,” the Old Man said, shuffling in.

“Zipper,” she replied, setting the carton back on its shelf. Ever since he’d been struck by lightning out near the Infamous Elm, he’d been slipping—he had walked out of the bathroom once with his pecker still hanging out of his pants. But aside from that one thing, she didn’t mind the change. He was humbler now, and didn’t act like he owned the world.

“Seen Sill?” she asked. Sill had claimed cramps this morning and begged Nina to let her call in sick to school. Nina had agreed, though that excuse, like all the others, was wearing thin. At first she had indulged Sill’s grief, but her daughter had to learn how to stand against it and keep going—and if that meant Nina being brusque or cold, well, so be it.

The Old Man shook his head, clacking his cane against the table legs as he settled into a chair, and gave a phlegmy cough. “I can feel it coming.”

She’d had enough of kitchens for one day. Nina went up to the second floor without another word to her father-in-law. As she’d expected, Sill wasn’t in her room. There had been no sign of her at Rose’s; maybe they’d gone to town together. Nina sat on Sill’s bed, running her hand over the pink-flowered comforter cover.

How will she bear it? she’d whispered to Perry, meaning Rose of course—but she’d meant Sill too. On a corkboard above Sill’s dresser was a photo of Lance. He leaned his back against a tree trunk and looked into the camera with his head tilted. The expression in his eyes—a soft velvety brown—was blatantly seductive. Looking at it now, Nina knew: They slept together. That bolt of knowledge made her scan his face for deceit, but she saw just a boy, looking seductively at her, Nina, with a question in his eyes that she couldn’t decipher. Thank God Sill hadn’t gotten pregnant. She pulled the comforter cover into her fist and smoothed it out again.

It would be necessary for Perry to take over Rose’s land—what she’d seen today made that clear. If the Browns didn’t get it, the bank would. Perry would require Nina’s firm hand on his shoulder to see it through, just as he needed her encouragement to stand up to the Old Man. She took a breath before she stood, and then fluffed Sill’s pillows.

Downstairs the Old Man still sat in the kitchen, listening to the radio. The weatherman, Ted Waite, recited a list of the counties on alert. Perry had known the man a bit, years before, when he went by “Eddie” and sauntered through town picking up girls. Nina thought the radioman still sounded like a philanderer, even now, with that wide, shallow smile in his voice. She turned the volume down.

“How about fixing Sill’s bike? The front wheel has some bent spokes.” She was usually able to get the Old Man to do things for her, though she didn’t push. First she’d ask him to do the bike, and if he balked at that she’d move onto the thing she really wanted—the rabbit fence. She’d learned how to handle her father-in-law through trial and error, and unlike Perry, she didn’t take one stone for a whole wall.

He stuck his pinky finger into his ear and then withdrew it for inspection. “I’ll take a look.”

“That’d be great.” She opened the dishwasher and started unloading.

“Not today.”

“Okay, whenever you can.” Perry planned to ask his father again about his idea to try some livestock. She’d urged him to—it was past time that he took over officially, and the way his father was stringing him along would only bring about more bitterness. The Old Man coughed. He’d sit there for hours, rattling the newspaper and working his post-nasal drip. If she turned around now, she’d hurl something, or scream.

“We’ve gotta get ready,” he said.

Toast crumbs littered the sink. She rinsed them down the drain and wiped her hands on a dishtowel. “I know.” She had the storm routine down pat—they’d done it often enough, when tornadoes had cut close, but ultimately passed them by. Nina would open windows to give the wind leeway. Then she’d help the Old Man to the root cellar and they’d sit, breathing the dank air until the battery-operated radio gave the all clear.

The confident voice on the radio faded out and a jingle for an auto body chain came on, offering an oil change and brake check special. For no reason at all, the neat pyramid of canned corn she’d seen in Rose’s sewing room popped into her head: the only tidy thing in the whole house.

“Sherwin, I went to Rose’s this morning.”

The Old Man set down the paper, waiting.

“She wasn’t there. The place isn’t…she’s not…I cleaned the fridge.” Sill would be with Rose now, maybe eating lunch—did they sit and talk and cry about Lance?

The Old Man brushed his hand over his head and touched the tobacco tin in his left shirt pocket. He had done his part to ruin the friendship between their two families. She’d never asked what his regrets were. When Theo died and Rose was alone with her boy and a mortgage, the writing was on the wall, even if Rose wouldn’t admit it. The Old Man had started going over there to talk Rose into leasing some acreage, and it was more than just looking out for widows and orphans. Nina suspected that he went to court her. That was a sore point with Perry, so she never mentioned it. One day the Old Man came back, his shoulders stiffer than usual. I’m done trying to help that crazy witch, he’d said. And that was that—three generations of complicated neighborly history officially unraveled.

He didn’t look stiff now. He’d shrunk a little at her words and slumped in his chair. But soon he rallied, picked up the paper, shook it, set it back down and pointed to the radio. “You’d better get the clothes off the line.”

“I think Sill talks to her.” Nina’s eyes stung. “She won’t talk to me, you know. My own daughter.” Her voice seemed too loud, and she blinked. She pulled the dishtowel off her shoulder and turned to swipe it along the counter by the sink, collecting more crumbs. “I’m going to make coffee. Do you want some?” They both needed something bracing. He loved her coffee, and he’d take it as it was meant—a peace offering.

The Old Man shook the newspaper again. “No, thanks.”

She opened the coffee canister and measured out a quarter pot’s worth. The smell made the kitchen brighter. “Oh, what the heck,” he said. “Okay.” So Nina kept going, counting out a full pot at twelve heaping scoops. She liked it strong, and so did he.

“She’ll come around,” the Old Man said to Nina’s back. “The girl won’t find what she needs over there.”

Nina drew a breath, sliding her shoulder blades down her back. “I just can’t believe he’s dead. That it happened. Do you remember that time at the creek when the kids were little and Lance almost drowned? He was only four. He did drown. I think his heart stopped. Remember? I can’t stop thinking about that day. Sill doesn’t remember anything about it…but why would she? None of us spoke of it after.”

She couldn’t tell if he was listening. He tapped his fingers against his chest, a nervous tic for as long as she’d known him, which was almost half of her life. When the smell of brewed coffee filled the room, she poured them each a mug. Ted Waite was back on the radio, talking about being alert, being careful. The Old Man shoved his chair back from the table as she set the mug in front of him.

“Sherwin, why didn’t we ever speak of what happened? At the creek, I mean. I don’t understand. It was so…was it out of respect for Rose, or some sort of, I don’t know, some sense of shame that we let it happen in the first place? Or fear? Was it too close for comfort?”

She slurped at the coffee and stood with one hand clasped behind her neck. Though she’d been horrified that Lance was killed fighting in that strangely muffled, faraway war, a part of her was not surprised. Rose had snatched him from the maw when he was a child, but all she’d done was buy some extra time. They were followed by a shadow. Nina believed this with a conviction as strong as any she had, and her convictions, though they’d narrowed over the years, had deepened apace. But she’d never say aloud what she thought about Rose to anyone, even the Old Man. She knew how it would sound.

Her questions sank into silence. The Old Man cleared a gob of phlegm from his throat, spat into a paper napkin, and took a sip of coffee. Perry would be amazed to hear her speak like this to his father. Her husband thought, because she was pushing him to take over, that she resented the Old Man as much as he did. Well, she didn’t have a buffer, like Perry did. She was the buffer. And most days, she and Perry passed like ships—with him, it was all logistics and whispered dethronings. But the Old Man was around and underfoot, peppering her day with conversation. They talked more than Perry would ever know. Both men would be shocked at the way she talked to the other. Constant daily betrayals.

“I had a friend in Korea,” he told her. “Joe Carnahan.” Not again. Another one of his rambling war stories. She stared into the black brew in her mug. “Got shot up outside of Pusan. He was a good guy. For more than a week I thought he was dead. Where do people get buried in a place like that? I mean, in New York City. That’s where he was from. It’s all I thought about. But it turned out he’d lost a leg and they shipped him home.” He’d never heard from Joe again. That’s how war was. People who were like your own flesh, then an empty space, and it all kept going. The names changed, but the purpose didn’t. They were Americans, that was all they were. “Common ground,” he said. “That’s what we fight for.”

She put her empty mug into the dishwasher and shut the door with a click.

The Old Man had trailed off. Ordinarily, she would say something about sacrifice or bravery or how the world used to be, but he didn’t seem to be waiting for that. He looked at his fingertips, pushing them together in a steeple shape. Perry and his Old Man would duke it out until the Old Man finally relented and let Perry make some decisions, and it would be up to her, Nina, to referee, to make sure it didn’t implode, or (and here’s where the tricky part came in) that it did. A necessary tumult before resolution.

“More coffee?” she asked, feeling her failure in the question. She would make a special trip this week to talk to Pastor Bowen. And she’d take Sill with her.

The Old Man stood, a struggle in the way he pushed himself against the wood table. His bones were worrying him. He crumpled the snotty napkin onto his dirty plate and pushed it, not unkindly, onto the counter next to Nina. Then he told her it was pointless to dwell on the past, reminded her about the sheets on the line, and limped out the door, probably to corral his son.

Wind pushed at the kitchen curtains. Nina grabbed the laundry basket from its spot near the back door and stepped outside.

She felt a sheet, pulled a handful to her nose, and deemed it dry enough. Light blue cloth slid off the line into her plastic basket, and a queen-sized vista opened in front of her where there had been percale. The same view she’d seen while gardening and hanging laundry for the past seventeen years: the downslope with its scratchy grass, the start of the fields, the big sky. There was the storm, all right. A heavy bank of clouds in the west, miles away.

She felt a prick in the air, a twingy feeling on her forearms and the back of her neck. The storm front cued in the rest of her senses. A breeze brought a smell of manure and minerals on a whiff of super-oxygenated air. Perry’s tractor grew louder—he must be pulling it up near the shed. Once he cut the engine an expectant silence fell. She pictured him sitting in the high seat, not yet moving, listening for her as she listened for him. Here we go again, stumbling through the motions and then pulling up, startled, to find ourselves in the thick of it. In the thickets.

If someone asked her whether she knew what to do in the event of an emergency she would laugh and say of course. But that’s not what Louise Logan asked her, or Rose or Sill. How will we bear it? On the horizon heavy clouds dipped low toward the ground, and then dipped again. She saw a little upside-down peak form, an exploratory finger, soon sucked back into the larger mass. It emerged again, and then again, larger each time until the peak became a funnel, dipping down, swirling back into itself. She’d often seen them from a distance. Once she’d watched two funnels emerge from the same cloud, a dark ribbon and its shadow, twisting together, receding from view. This one wasn’t receding, it was heading toward them—far enough away, but growing. A blurry gray-black, churning and strengthening.

Nina felt a pang in her stomach—she’d completely forgotten to eat lunch. There was something about the shape’s quickness, the darting of it, that reminded her of a child at play. What if Sill wasn’t with Rose? What if she was somewhere else, in the path and unprotected? Nina ran into the kitchen. The Old Man had the back panel off the transistor radio and was rummaging in the drawer for batteries. Perry came through the front door just as she set down the basket and turned to the phone. Here he was, finally, her husband, his eyes squinty and his face red. He asked for Sill. “She’s with Rose,” Nina said, and Perry nodded. The phone line was dead. His hands dangled at his sides as they always did when he was indoors, knobby and rough.

“Sill’s gotta be with Rose,” Nina repeated. The Old Man agreed, though she had no idea how he would know—he scarcely acknowledged his granddaughter most days. Perry looked at them both blankly, and the Old Man headed to the bathroom, grabbing his belt buckle as he went down the hall.

She knew what Perry would say before his words came. He rubbed a palm against the leg of his dirty jeans. “Rose said ‘No.’”

Nina took a breath. “As long as the Old Man has a grip, we’ll never—” She could finish that sentence, and had, a hundred different ways: threats, warnings, pleas, predictions. The skin of her neck felt crepey, still warm from her run through the fields. She pictured Sill and Rose, crouched together in that tiny sewing room, whispering, backs curved around their memories of Lance. Down the hall, the bathroom door handle smacked against the wall. Nina shrugged. “Let him have the place. Better yet, let the storm take it.”

A far-off storm siren wailed just as the Old Man clattered back into the kitchen. Nina brushed a hand over her face and grabbed his elbow. Perry took his father’s other side and the three of them angled awkwardly toward the front door, a six-legged beast—seven, if you counted the Old Man’s cane.

As she swung the front door wide the wind stirred her braid and lifted her shirttails—they stepped into an ocean of noise, that first lick of wind promising salvation. Lift me up and take me out of here. “We’ve got it,” Nina yelled across the Old Man to Perry. “Go do one more check for Sill.”

Perry turned toward the back of the house.

“He’d better move his ass,” the Old Man said, and started down the sloping hill to the storm cellar. He was moving too fast and wobbled, flailing his cane. She lunged for him and grabbed his arm but he shook her off, impatient as a kid. It struck her, as it often had, that he wasn’t holding control of the land to punish them: he was holding on as a boy holds onto his favorite toy—a prehensile greed, that aversion to sharing that most of us unlearn, or pretend to. She kept pace and grabbed his elbow. He tried to shake free again and she needed to say something sharp, pull him into line, but instead she shook him right back, pulling his elbow toward her and then shoving. He crumpled, his hand latching onto her wrist. They fell together, rolling down the slope. The Old Man gripped so hard the bones in her wrist shifted. A pebble bounced off her cheek, and she clamped her eyes shut. The air rushed by, fabric tore, someone yelled, an elbow clocked her in the head.

They rolled to a stop, and by the time she’d disentangled her limbs and struggled to her knees Perry was there, yanking her to her feet. The Old Man still held her wrist and she grabbed him with her other hand and helped Perry pull him up. His eyes blazed as she unpeeled his fingers. “Take him,” she said, her breath snagging.

Up the slope, a yellow t-shirt. “There’s Sill,” she yelped. Scrambling up the hill, she heard Perry yell something she couldn’t catch. Nina fell onto her hands once, the whole sky crunched, and at last she stood face to face with her daughter.

Sill’s eyes were bruises. Nina put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. There was blood on the yellow shirt—one of them was bleeding. They had to get to the cellar. “Come on.” Nina grabbed Sill’s hands and backed down the hill. You aren’t lost, you’re here with me—it may not be what you want but this is home. We—

Screaming wind blew Sill’s hair up and back, and her lips moved too fast, something about an album…lost…trying to find… Then Sill broke away and ran in the wrong direction. There was nothing to do but follow.