Seasons Under Heaven (7 page)

Sylvia thought that over for a moment. “It wouldn’t be about us, Cathy.” The words were not said in condemnation. They were thoughtful words, meted out carefully. “Harry feels called.”

“Wow,” Cathy said. “I don’t mean to seem so bowled over by this, but it’s kind of hard for me to imagine. Most people work all their lives to get where he is. It’s just hard to grasp.”

“For me, too,” Sylvia said. “I understand why he wants to do it. I’m just not sure I’m that selfless.”

“Give me a break,” Cathy said. “You and Brenda are the most selfless people I know.”

Tory couldn’t help noticing that Cathy didn’t mention her. But she wouldn’t have expected her to. She looked down at the boards beneath her feet.

“The first year we went,” Sylvia explained, “we worked in Leon, about an hour and a half from Managua. I lost ten pounds in two weeks. Hardly ate a thing, because it was so disgusting to go to the marketplaces to buy meat that was hanging in the open, covered with flies.”

“Gross,” Tory whispered.

“The second year, we went to Masaya. I thought it would be better, because it was right on the lake. I pictured a resort area, you know? Imagine my surprise when we got there and all we saw were run-down buildings badly in need of repair. No telling where we’d live if we went there indefinitely.”

“Where did you stay then?” Brenda asked.

“In the home of a missionary who was already there. And in spite of my disappointment at the location, it turned out to be a fruitful trip. Harry operated on hundreds of people and treated hundreds of others. He did all types of surgery—not just heart cases. Because of Harry, the little church the missionary started has doubled. Some of those converts are starting churches of their own. There’s no doubt, it’s God’s work.”

“For two weeks, maybe,” Cathy said. “But forever?”

A strong wind whipped up, dancing in their hair, as Sylvia seemed to think that over. “I’m not sure God’s calling us to do this. I’m praying about it. I want to do God’s will, but frankly, I’m not sure I’m up to this. I don’t have a lot to contribute, you know? Harry practices medicine there, and they flock to him by the hundreds. He helps them. But I just don’t think I have that much to offer.”

“You have a
lot
to offer,” Brenda said. “If you put everything you have experience doing on a resume, it would never fit into an envelope.”

Tory’s eyes settled on Brenda for a moment as she tried to let that sink in. Brenda made being a housewife seem noble, yet
Tory couldn’t think of it that way. To her, it was a detour on the way to her career goals, something that had gotten in her way.

“So what are you going to do?” Tory asked finally.

“I don’t know,” Sylvia said. “Harry told me he would wait until I made the decision.”

“Oh, great,” Tory said. “So he dumps it in your lap?”

“I already know what he wants to do. He’s leaving it up to me.”

“It’s better than having him come home and telling her to pack her bags, that they’re on their way out of the country,” Brenda said. “I think it’s sweet.”

“He believes that if God really is calling him, He’ll call me, too.”

“If I were you I wouldn’t answer the phone,” Cathy said. Everyone laughed.

Tory looked over at her house and saw that the light in the laundry room was on. She knew Barry wasn’t doing laundry. Was he working on the computer they kept there? Cursing her for being so stupid as to leave the children alone long enough to destroy the equipment he’d worked overtime to pay for?

Wearily, she got up. “I guess I’d better go home.”

“Might be a good idea,” Sylvia said.

She paused a moment, crossing her arms. “Sylvia, did you ever have days when Harry was working long hours, and you just really wanted him to come home?”

“I sure did. And when he finally did, I was happy to see him.”

Tory nodded, wishing on one hand that she could be more like Sylvia, and on the other stubbornly holding on to her anger at Barry. “It’s just so unfair, these long hours.”

“He’s doing his job.”

“Yeah, I know.” She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Sometimes Sylvia’s wisdom drove her right up the wall. “Well, I’ll see you all later. Brenda, let me know if you need anything.”

“Thanks.”

Tory tramped back across the yard and into her garage. She took a moment to collect herself before opening the door and going in. Was he stewing now as she had stewed earlier? Was he waiting at the kitchen table, poised to attack?

She made a point of closing the door loudly enough for him to hear, then went in and looked around the kitchen. He wasn’t there, so she went to the laundry room. He heard her coming and glanced over his shoulder at her. He was sitting in front of the computer with a bottle of some kind of cleaner he must have brought from the office. He had taken the keyboard apart.

“I don’t know if I can fix it,” he mumbled.

“Yeah, that’s what I figured.”

He turned around in the swivel desk chair she’d gotten for Mother’s Day. “Look, I’m sorry I wasn’t home sooner. This account will mean a million dollars for the company, and a sure raise for me.”

It was hard to be mad at him when he put it that way. “It’s okay. You just wouldn’t believe all that’s happened today.” She wanted to make a checklist of today’s tragedies, so he would understand. She wanted him to be amazed at the things she put up with; she wanted him to submit her name for “Mother of the Year.” “You just don’t know what it’s like,” she said. “Staying home all day with two preschoolers. I don’t have much adult companionship. And I have no time to write. I look forward to you coming home and relieving me, and then when you don’t…”

“Tory, we agreed,” he said. “When you got pregnant with Brittany, we agreed that you would raise our children, instead of letting them go to day care. Writing a book was way down on the priority list.”

She bristled. “So what’s wrong with my writing a book, as long as I’m getting everything else done? The house is spotless, Barry. It always is. The kids are clean, they’re fed, they’re loved. What’s wrong with me wanting to write a book?”

“Nothing, unless it makes you miserable when you have to spend time with the kids.”

She turned away from the door and went back into the kitchen. He’d left his briefcase and his car keys on the table. She picked them up and put them where they belonged.

He got up and leaned in the doorway, right where she’d been standing. “I’m just saying, Tory, that when I work overtime, it’s
because I have to do that to make it possible for us to live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and still let you stay home with the children.”

She didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Though the counter was clean, as it always was, she got her sponge from the sink and began wiping it again.

“Tory, do you want to go back to work? Is that it? Do you want to get a job and let me stay home with the kids?”

She knew there was about as much chance of that as there was of her running for congress. “I want to be a writer.” She slammed the sponge down and spun around to face him. “I’m smarter than this, Barry. I’m smarter than getting cats out of trees and rescuing Spencer from horse corrals and reading Dr. Seuss. People used to look up to me and admire me when I was in college. I want to make an impact. That was the plan.”

“You
are
making an impact. You’re raising two children who are secure and happy. You’re doing a great job. But if it’s instant gratification you want, you’re not going to get it in child rearing.”

“I’m not going to get it in writing, either,” she said, “so that’s a low blow. You know it’s not instant
anything
I’m after.”

“Then what are you after?”

“I just want to write four pages in a day without losing it to a Kool-Aid spill,” she said. “I just want to be able to sit by myself and think sometimes. I just want to be able to reach a goal or two.”

“Well, if you didn’t spend all your time cleaning this house and reading self-help books, maybe you’d get something done.”

“Oh, so now you’re upset because the house is clean?”

“No, I’m upset because you have to have everything perfect. That’s how you are with your writing. Other people do it for a hobby. They work it in. But if you can’t have everything exactly like you want it before you start writing, then forget it.”

“Barry, don’t you understand that I
did
write today? I wrote four pages and it’s gone.”

“Did it ever occur to you to try to re-create those four pages?”

“How? The computer was broken.”

“You could let the kids play in the little pool and sit out there with a legal pad and a pen. You remember those, don’t you?”

He was right, she thought. It could be done that way. Lots of people did it that way. It just wasn’t the way she wanted to do it.

He went to the table and sat down. “Come here,” he said. “Sit down and tell me everything you can remember about what you wrote. It’ll come back to you, then you can take a pen and paper and write it again.”

She just stood there with her arms crossed. “Barry, it doesn’t work that way.”

He tapped the chair. “Come on, Tory. Just try. Is this still the story you wanted to do about the nurse in France in World War II?”

“Yes.”

“And she falls for a wounded soldier, but he dies…”

“I had him get wounded today. He was brought into triage, and she met him. It was really good.”

“Great. What else?”

She kept standing where she was. “Nothing else. That’s as far as I got.”

“Good. Then you don’t have so much to re-create. What happens next? He’s going to die, right? And while she’s grieving, Dr. Right comes along and rescues her from herself?”

“Yeah.”

“Then start writing. It’s a guaranteed best-seller.”

She shook her head. “I can’t turn it on just like that. I’m not in the mood.”

He stared up at her, his face hardening. “Tory, I’m trying to help you. Look, if you’re so miserable, then let’s try something else. Plan A was to stay home and raise our kids. But if Plan A isn’t working, then let’s think of Plan B. Just come up with one, Tory. You could hire a baby-sitter for a few hours a day so you could write. Whatever it takes.”

She felt horrible and thought of Sylvia and Brenda telling her how she should be happy to stay home with her husband
when he finally came in. She rarely heard them complain. The first time she’d
ever
heard Sylvia complain was tonight when she’d spoken about Nicaragua. Tory wondered if there was something wrong with her that rendered her incapable of appreciating things that other mothers longed for. The truth was, she didn’t want to go out and get a job, and she didn’t want to put her kids in day care. She
did
want to stay home with them. “It’s just that…no one puts much value in child rearing,” she said, then wished she hadn’t said it aloud.

He got up and leaned on the counter, forcing her to look at him. “Just tell me one thing, Tory,” he said. “Who is it that you’re trying to impress?”

She couldn’t believe he’d asked that. “What are you talking about? I’m not trying to impress anybody.”

“You said that no one puts value in child rearing. That sounds to me like you’re trying to prove something or impress somebody.”

She felt her face growing hot. “You’ll never understand,” she said, “because you can go to work and do your job and meet people and be good at what you do and get awards and recognition and pay raises. You can stand back and look at the work you’ve done and be proud of it and tell everyone that you did it. I can’t do any of that, Barry.”

“I think you’re wrong,” he said. “I think Brittany and Spencer are better awards than any pay raise and any job recognition.”

“Great, now you’re acting like I don’t value them!”

“It sounds like it, Tory. Sometimes it really does.”

“That’s it.” She squeezed out the sponge and went to throw it into the washing machine, then dropped the top loudly.

Then she went to bed angry and cold to the sound of David Letterman in the living room.

Cathy paced the front room of her house, the room they called the formal dining room, though there was nothing formal about it. Jerry had gotten their antique dining-room suite in the divorce, since it had come from his family, and now he and his new wife used it at Thanksgiving and Christmas. Cathy had never had the inclination to replace it—in addition to never having the money. Shopping for furniture was something that took time, and she never had a block large enough to do it. So she had moved a garage-sale table in here, covered it with a tablecloth, and set up her computer and printer on it.

Tonight, what drew her to the room was the fact that it had a window overlooking the front yard. From here, she could see the entrance to Cedar Circle, and each time she passed the window she peered out to see whether any headlights had lit up the street. Annie was three hours later than she’d said she would be.

When she had come home from Brenda’s with Mark and realized that Annie should have been home by then, she headed
over to the high school’s baseball field. The parking lot was empty. The game had long been over. Getting angry, she had gone by the grocery store where Rick worked, and asked if he knew where she could be.

“She doesn’t tell me anything,” Rick said. “The brat’s probably gone to a movie or something.”

“She wouldn’t dare. Not after I barely let her go to the game on a school night.”

“Sure, she would,” he said. “Annie does whatever she wants. Usually, you just don’t know about it.”

Cathy’s mouth had fallen open. “Rick, I hope you intend to explain that!”

“Can’t, Mom. Gotta go. I’m on the clock.”

Frustrated, she had gone back to the car. She’d left Mark in it with the motor running, and he had moved to the driver’s seat so people would think he was old enough to drive. The radio was on a heavy metal station and turned to full volume. She was embarrassed when she opened the door and the music came blaring out. “Move over, Mark,” she yelled. “And turn that thing down. Good grief!”

He moved over but didn’t turn the radio down, so she got in and turned it off.

“Hey, I was listening to that!”

“And so was half the town. There are laws about disturbing the peace, Mark. And I don’t want you going deaf. You already do a pretty good job of not hearing me whenever I tell you to do something.”

“So did you find her?”

Cathy didn’t put the car in reverse just yet. Instead, she sat there, staring out the window, trying to think. “No, Rick didn’t know anything. Mark, he said something that really bothered me. He said that Annie does whatever she wants. That I just usually don’t find out about it.”

“He’s got
that
right,” Mark said, reaching for the radio again.

She slapped his hand away. “I’m talking to you. What did he mean by that? What has she done that I don’t know about?”

He looked at her then, as if trying to decide whether to talk. “I can’t tell you that, Mom. It’s classified. If I tell on her, she’ll tell on me.”

Cathy’s heart deflated. Was there a conspiracy among her children to dupe her into servitude without asking questions? Were there things going on after she went to bed at night? Did they have whole identities she knew nothing about?

She popped the car into reverse and pulled too abruptly out of the parking space. The tires squealed as she came to a stop and switched to “drive.”

“Way to go, Mom!” Mark said. “Burning rubber. All right!”

She felt her face reddening and forced her foot to go easier on the pedal. “Mark, I’m going to make a suggestion to you right now, and I want you to pay close attention. It would be very wise of you if you didn’t utter another word until we got home…unless you plan to tell me what your sister has done that I don’t know about.”

“Sorry.”

“That was a word.”

“Ex-
cuse
me.”

“That was two words,” she said through her teeth. “Why don’t you stop by the bathrooms on the way to bed and clean the toilets? Burn off some of that energy.”

“Mom! You’re mad at Annie and taking it out on me. No fair!”

“No, Mark, right now I’m most definitely mad at you. But it’s a good thing, because I’ll get clean toilets out of it, and you’ll learn to respect your mother. See how these things have mutual benefits? Now, if you’d like to keep talking, there are some dishes in the sink that need washing.”

Mark hadn’t said another word. And now she had clean toilets, and he was sound asleep in bed. Rick had even come home from work, but Annie was still nowhere to be found.

“Mom?” She turned back from the window and saw Rick in the doorway. “I called Allen Spreway’s house. His mom said he still wasn’t home either, so she’s obviously with him. I asked her
if she knew when he had to be home, and she said he didn’t have a curfew.”

“Terrific. My daughter is out with some condom-carrying kid with no curfew.”

He grinned. “Cool. Alliteration.”

“What?”

“Never mind. Mom, I could go out looking for her, if you want.”

“Where would you look?” she asked, turning back to the window.

“There are places where kids go…You know…to park and stuff.”

She felt nauseous. “So you think that’s where your sister is?”

“She could be. Or she could be at Pizza Hut. Lots of people go there after the game. Most of them would be gone after three hours, though.”

She turned back to the window. “Why is she doing this to me?”

Rick came closer and peered out over her shoulder. He’d long ago surpassed her in height, and was filling out. He wasn’t the lanky, loping kid he used to be. “Mom, don’t think of it as her doing anything
to
you. She probably hasn’t given you a single thought.”

“Maybe we’re just assuming the worst,” Cathy said, as if she hadn’t heard him. “What if she’s hurt somewhere? What if they had a wreck? Or what if this guy, this Allen Spreway, is a jerk and won’t bring her home?”

“Well, don’t get mad at me for saying this, Mom, but Annie’s not the victim type. Wherever she is, it’s exactly where she wants to be.”

Headlights lit up the street, and she caught her breath as the car turned into the driveway. “There she is!” Cathy said.

“I’m outa here,” Rick said, heading for the stairs. “I don’t want to hear the yelling.”

Cathy didn’t respond, because she knew there probably would be plenty. She went into the kitchen and waited with her arms crossed as the garage door came up. She stood poised to attack
the moment her daughter came in, but she didn’t right away. It took several more moments before the door finally opened.

Annie stepped into the kitchen and looked surprised to see her. “Mom? You didn’t have to wait up.”

Cathy’s mouth fell open. “Are you kidding me? You’re three hours late and that’s all you have to say?”

“The game went into extra innings. I can’t help it if—”

“Don’t you even try it,” Cathy bit out. “I went to the ballpark and the game was over hours ago. Where have you been?”

“Just riding around.”

Cathy glared at her, her mind desperately seeking a response. “Just riding around? Annie, how wise do you think it was to stay out three hours late when I almost didn’t let you go out on a school night in the first place? How soon do you think I’ll allow you to go out again?”

“Oh, Mom. Give me a break. I’m not some little kid. I’m fifteen.”

“Well, you’re about to be treated like ‘some little kid.’ You’re not going anywhere for two weeks, and right now, you can march up to your room and unplug your telephone. Bring it to me. You won’t get it back until I think you deserve it.”

“That’s ridiculous!” Annie yelled. “I didn’t do anything wrong! And I
am
going out this weekend because Allen asked me out and I said yes. There’s no way I’m going to tell him that my mommy won’t let me go.”

“Fine. Then I’ll tell him when he comes to get you,” Cathy said.

“I can’t believe this.” Annie threw her purse down on the counter. “What is it with you? Did your date turn out to be a dud again? You
always
take it out on me when you don’t have fun, but I am
not
responsible for your love life, Mom.”

Cathy tried to follow that thread of logic but realized her daughter was just trying to change the subject. “Go to bed, Annie. I’ll deal with you tomorrow.”

“Fine. But I
am
going out with Allen this weekend. I’ve been waiting for him to like me all year, and now that he does, I’m not going to let you blow it for me.”

A thousand reactions played through Cathy’s mind—from having Annie’s mouth sewn shut to chaining her to her bedroom doorknob. The child needed discipline, she thought. She needed to be taught a lesson. She needed to learn respect. She needed…

…a father in the home.

Suddenly, Cathy was incredibly tired, and she looked at the clock and saw that it was after one. “Go get the telephone, Annie, and give it to me. Then go to bed. And when I try to wake you up in the morning, I’d better not have to tell you twice, because I’m going to be in a worse mood than you are, and I could be dangerous.”

Annie jerked her purse off of the counter and huffed up to her room.

Cathy sat in the den for several moments, waiting for the phone, but Annie never brought it down. Finally fed up, she stormed up the stairs and burst into Annie’s room. She was in her bed with the light off, talking on the telephone.

Cathy turned the light on, and Annie cried out, “Mom!”

She stormed to the phone jack and jerked the cord out, then grabbed the phone from Annie’s hands and flung it across the room. It hit the wall with a crash, then thudded to the floor. She turned back to Annie and saw that her daughter was finally taking her seriously. “I’m not a violent woman,” Cathy bit out, her hands shaking with rage and her eyes blazing. “But you’re pushing me too hard, young lady. If you have one shred of judgment, you know that I’ve reached my threshold of maternal tolerance. From here on out it gets ugly.”

“Sorry,” Annie said.

It was the closest Cathy was going to get to resolving this tonight, she thought. At least Annie wasn’t talking back anymore. It was a small victory, but hard won.

Without another word, she picked up the pieces of Annie’s phone and stormed to her bedroom. She didn’t sleep a wink for the rest of the night.