Getting Somewhere (25 page)

Neither Sarah nor Lauren has said a word, but they are listening closely when Jenna says, “God, that must have been awful.”

Grace nods, begins to wrap the celery plant with the sheet of newspaper that the wind has been struggling to snatch out of her hand.

“It was. My grandparents, well, especially my granddad, never really recovered. He wasn't the easiest person to live with even before that but after, well, he got pretty hostile toward . . . just about everything, and some people toward him as well. I'm pretty sure there's almost nothing worse than being falsely accused, especially when it's about someone you love.”

“How old were you?”

“I was twelve.” Grace pauses, glances at Jenna. Sarah has to lean in a bit to hear Grace's next words, to catch the whispered grief before it is snatched away. “When you're a kid, you don't really understand exactly what's going on. I think, for me, it was mostly hard because I'd always thought, you know, that if someone cares about you, they'll take you with them when they go.”

Grace's words slam into Sarah's head with throttling impact and lodge there like a sharp stone.

She barely hears Grace say, “I guess that pretty much does it for the research, huh?”

Jenna is reaching to hold the corner of the newspaper down while Grace ties it on. “Yeah, I guess so.”

The first drops seem too large to be real. There is still a line of blue to the east, but the rest of the sky is quickly being taken over by scudding gray clouds overhead, followed by more slowly moving black thunderheads to the west. They have just a few plants to go, and Jenna takes the pile of newspaper from Lauren and spreads out a double sheet for Grace and then one for herself.

Sarah is trying to hold two plants at once.

“Lauren, for godsakes, can you help with this?”

Lauren sidles over, gingerly takes one of the celery stalks between her hands but is holding it much too loosely to be of any help.

“Aren't we going to get struck by lightning or something?”

“Only if it takes us so fucking long to get this done that we're still out here when the storm actually hits,” Jenna snaps. “Hold that tighter!”

They are across the bridge and halfway through the field closest to the house when the rain hits full force, falling so fast that they are getting as wet from water splashing up as they are from the rain coming down. They are just passing the prep shed when Donna comes out, stands in the doorway for a second, and then joins them on the path to the house, running a little clumsily with her basket full of produce for that night's supper.

“Did you get everything done?” she yells to Grace over the sound of their feet splattering, the rain thudding down, the rumble of thunder in the distance.

Grace and Jenna glance over at each other. “Yep,” Grace answers. “I think we got her done.”

TUESDAY, JULY 17

“I USED TO THINK I COULDN'T LIVE WITHOUT MUSIC
but, out here, I don't think about it that much. Sometimes, I'll hear a little snatch of some song in my head and then I kind of miss it.”

“I suppose you could always sing those songs yourself,” Cassie suggests.

Jenna laughs. “That is definitely something you do
not
want to hear. Plus, it's not . . . well, you probably haven't heard a lot of new music, have you?”

“Uh, no.”

“Did you listen to any music?”

“Well, Gram liked to listen to the radio sometimes. She mostly liked what they call oldies. What would that be, like, from the 1950s or something? It seemed like, as she got worse, things that brought up memories, like stuff from her earlier life, got her really agitated. So, I mostly played classical music. Sometimes that got too, I don't know, loud and vibrant for her, and then I'd just put on one of those easy stations.”

“What do you mean, easy?”

“Isn't that what it's called? Easy music? They would say something like”—and Cassie tucks her chin into her neck, deepens her voice—“ ‘You've been listening to Easy 103.7 where all the music comes easy.'”

Jenna laughs. “Easy listening. That's what they call it. Like mostly instrumental, no words.”

Cassie and Jenna are walking back to the river. Cassie is so light on her feet that she imagines herself hovering just a few inches above the grassy lane. Nothing is at all as she'd thought and, for the first time, that is good.

“So, did you like that classical stuff?” Jenna asks.

“Oh yes. Especially Mozart. And Beethoven. And I love Chopin. . . . One time Gordon brought me this book from the library,
Big Book of the Symphony
. I'm sure it was supposed to be for little kids but I really liked it anyway. It told about some of the composers and the history of classical music but mostly about the sections of an orchestra. It was really interesting, even though I couldn't play the compact disc in the front because we didn't have a player for that. But I followed along the descriptions and they told in the book how each instrument sounds so I listened when I heard the symphonies on the radio and tried to pick out the instruments. I figured out that it was the cello that I liked the best, especially when it played the melody. I think that may be one of the most beautiful sounds in the world, other than birds, of course.”

Cassie glances Jenna's way and she still seems to be listening so Cassie says, “I do like people singing though. Maybe I would like some of your music. Could we try to find it on the radio?”

“I guess we could. I didn't really think of that. And you can play me some cello music. We should ask.”

For a while there, Cassie had done everything she could think of to avoid the hurt of running into Jenna. She'd stopped walking at night because she was afraid Jenna might be waiting for her, signed up for work slots mostly in the house, though she couldn't avoid the garden on harvest days. And she'd said no when Jenna did come around, asking her to go swimming or if she was planning to take a walk, had to almost bite her tongue not to tell Jenna to just leave her alone, that she wasn't that easily fooled.

Then Cassie told her story. The feeling was like gathering up everything she's ever done or felt or known up to that moment and tying it into a ball and pitching it with all her might as far away as she could, and then watching to see what would happen next, what would roll back to her, what would have gotten left behind.

To Cassie's sheer amazement, what was left behind was Jenna. In addition to pleading Cassie's case in the group, Jenna didn't stop seeking Cassie out at all. In fact, she seemed more determined than ever to have Cassie's company for her own walks to the river, her swims, their conversations.

And Cassie loves the swims, almost craves them in the same way she imagines some people must feel about drugs. She is teetering between memory and anticipation, just as she does in that moment when her feet are no longer resting firmly on the ladder, leaning treacherously far out into her curiosity—and terror—about what this raw nakedness will bring.

She wants to imagine, but can't quite believe, that it might bring her baby back. She knows Ellie has made a few calls, knows as well that Ellie is still not completely behind the idea. The phone calls, the conversations about it, have pricked her senses to the point of pain, scraped her emotions so bare that her skin feels perpetually sunburned. More than once, she has considered telling Ellie to forget it, allowing her anxiety to prevail, and then collapsed in exhaustion, glad, for once, that her shyness prevents her from vocalizing her fears. Swimming with Jenna is one of the few things that successfully distracts Cassie from her agitation.

Despite her willingness to admit that she was wrong about Jenna, that what she overheard was purely an invention of Lauren's, Cassie has still not allowed herself the luxury of believing that Jenna sees her as a friend. Cassie has decided she is just outside of the realm of friendship, a kind of satellite, imagines herself orbiting beyond the common universe, unequipped for its requirements.

But Jenna came today, asked her to the river, even though they aren't going to swim.

After they cross the bridge over the creek, Cassie moves behind Jenna so they can walk single file into the woods, zigzagging through the trees to get to the swimming hole. Jenna stops abruptly just before the log bench, and Cassie peers around to see what has halted her. They both stand mesmerized by the transformation.

Cassie's voice is almost a whisper. “Do you think it ever floods?”

The river has become a raging torrent, the water muddy brown, roiling and snapping at the banks. Tree branches are floating on the surface, revealing the speed of the water, and several have gotten hung up on limbs extending from the river's edge or are clumped together against a grassy island on the opposite shore, beaten mercilessly by the fuming current. A ripple of foam rises and disappears just past the swimming hole where the river makes a severe bend and the girls can see that the water is at least several inches higher than it was they last time they were here.

Jenna shakes her head slowly. “I don't know.” She sounds a little worried. “It's like discovering a whole new personality. Doesn't feel like
our
river.”

Cassie doesn't answer for a minute. “I kind of like it.”

Jenna looks at her, surprised. “Really? Why?”

Cassie shakes her head, lifts her shoulders. “It's just kind of exciting. It seems like it's good to know all sides. Know what it's capable of, like a hidden power.” Cassie looks back at the log and sees that it is soaked.

Jenna sees her looking at it and springs toward it in mock heroism. “Never fear. Hefty is here.”

“Who?”

Jenna just laughs and shakes her head.

“Never mind,” she says and pulls a neatly folded plastic garbage bag out of her back pocket and spreads it over the log, extends her arm and bows slightly. “After you, madam.”

“Wow. Good thinking.”

“Thanks.”

They are quiet for a while and then Jenna says, “Where do you think all this water goes?”

“You mean, where does this river go?”

“Yeah.”

“Lake Michigan.”

“Really?”

“Yes. But it flows into the St. Joseph River first. And through a couple of dams, I think, before it gets there.”

Jenna is suddenly facing Cassie, alert and focused. “Dams? Like where? Near here?”

“Um, I know there's one upstream at Weston and another one downstream at Somerset. They built power plants there to generate electricity.”

“Like at the Hoover Dam.”

“Hoover Dam?”

“Yeah, out west. It's the same thing but huge, built all the way across the Colorado River in Arizona, I think.”

“I've never heard of it. What made you think of that?”

Jenna seems suddenly shy. She has picked up a stick and is digging in the soft dirt between her feet, wedging out a divot and spraying little clods of dirt onto her foot. She glances at Cassie, down again.

“You know, I think I might have been to one of those dams before, maybe even one of the ones on this river. It's weird.”

“What is?”

“Oh, just how you remember things. And thinking about my mom doing stuff like that with me when I was little. It was like this park with picnic tables and stuff. And I remember the building. Seemed huge to me, like a giant square, the brick all crumbling down. But there was this sign and I was still just learning to read, you know, working it out. That's why I remember. I couldn't quite get the name, but the rest of it said ‘power plant.' And for some reason, I loved the sound of that, kept saying it over and over again until my mom finally got so mad she said we weren't even going to stay there to eat our sandwiches unless I shut up.”

Cassie smiles, says, “Power plant. Yes, I can see why you would want to say that over and over again.”

Jenna nods, seems to be a little uncomfortable. They are both quiet for a bit. “I know about Hoover Dam because of my book,” Jenna mutters.

“Your book? Oh yes.”

“You probably thought it was weird that I wouldn't talk about it in group when Ellie asked me about it.”

“I didn't think it was weird. I just thought maybe it felt private to you. Some of the poems kind of felt that way to me. It would have been hard to say them out loud.”

“Yeah.” Jenna has stopped digging, is holding the stick across her knee, gazing up at the place where the rope swing attaches to the overhanging branch.

“I guess I just couldn't think what to say about it. At first I loved it and now . . . I kind of hate it.”

“Why?”

“Well, see, the story is about this little girl and in the first book,
The Bean Trees
, this woman is taking care of her because someone just kind of dumps her in her car—”

For just an instant, Cassie's mind blinks off and then on again. Did Jenna say a little girl dumped in a car? Is Jenna saying this because she thinks it's something Cassie needs to hear, a story about some terrible evil woman . . . ? But, no. Jenna is just going on, talking about something else.

“—and she had obviously been abused and didn't talk for a really long time. But in the second book, the little girl, her name is Turtle, sees a guy fall into the spillway around the Hoover Dam when they're there on vacation. At first, her mom, well, her adopted mom, is the only one who believes her, but then they find the guy and get him out and Turtle kind of becomes a hero.”

The child. The child becomes a hero. It's a story, a made-up story, and Jenna isn't talking about Cassie at all. Still . . . “But that's just, like, the first chapter,” Jenna continues, oblivious to Cassie's agitation. “Because of the publicity, the people back at the place where Turtle is originally from, an Indian reservation, find out about her and it sort of becomes a fugitive story because they want to get her back and her new mom, Taylor, doesn't want to give her back. I guess it's against the law or something for people to take Indian kids away from the reservation unless everyone agrees on it.”

Jenna abruptly stands, throws her stick overhand, hard and fast, into the river. It plunks in almost gently, seems to become completely absorbed by the current for one long moment, and then goes bobbing quickly away.

Jenna slowly backs up to the bench, sits back down beside Cassie.

“I guess I'm not really mad at the book. I'm more mad at myself.”

“Why?”

“Because it made me feel . . . I don't know, like, jealous. First, this great little kid gets to be adopted by this mom who really loves her, even though she isn't hers, and then all kinds of people want her, a whole goddamn Indian reservation wants her and she's got, like, this instant family and a cultural heritage and a history that belongs to all of them. At first, I wanted to tell about it, just because it's a really good story, and then, when I imagined what I would say about it, I realized . . . I couldn't. Not without . . .”

Cassie feels a little chastened, reacting the way she did. This is about Jenna, not her. “You couldn't without talking about yourself,” she says.

Jenna asks Cassie, “Is there anything you miss from your other life, the life before this?”

Cassie isn't exactly sure how to answer, her thoughts jumbled and confused between the pretend Cassie of her memories and the real one of right now, the girl who gave her baby up and the one who now wants her back.

“Well, I miss Gram. I really miss the Gram she was when I first knew her. I miss what it felt like to have her in that narrow window between figuring out that my mom wasn't coming back and Gram getting sick. I have so many questions now but there is no one to ask.”

“Like what?”

“Oh, mostly about my mother, I guess. And why Gordon kind of ran her life like he did, why she let him do that. And why she'd cut herself off from the world in so many ways, even before she got sick. But by the time I was probably seven or so, she was already starting to forget things. And I realize now that she might have always been a little, I don't know what you'd call it, maybe unbalanced. By the time I got really curious about how things might be different for us than they were for other people, Gram was bad enough that she couldn't manage by herself so I wouldn't have been able to go to school anyway.”

“Except that people find other ways of taking care of old people besides having little kids do it.” Jenna tries to keep her disgust hidden, but Cassie can hear it.

“I know. I know that now. I just, well, I miss
that
Gram is all I meant to say, the one who read to me and brushed my hair and told stories and took walks and went shopping and laughed at things other people laugh at, normal things. But she has been gone for a long time. I think she might be dead.”