Body and Bread (31 page)

“I don’t care what they think of
me
,” she says, her clear skies darkening. I picture her standing in her chinos and Christmas sweater next to Randy, the runway queen. “But I expect them to be kind to Cornelia.”

“Of course,” I say. “I’ll do everything I can to ensure that.”

“Maybe once they get to know her,” she says, chipper again, “see for themselves what a good girl she is, they’ll…”

Kurt walks with Emma through the kitchen to the game room. He flinches when he spots Terezie, then nods stiffly, muttering, “Hello.” While he and Hugh resume watching their football game, Kurt Jr. and Norine take turns pitching balls down miniature bowling lanes. Cornelia watches from an arm chair. Kurt Jr. trots, stretches, and tosses like a double-jointed athlete, each move gauged by Cornelia’s reaction. “Shame on you, Norine,” she teases when he throws his hands on the floor, kicks his feet up, then arches his back and inches haltingly forward. “Why’d you flip that boy upside down? You put him back, right this minute.”

Norine giggles, covering her face, her curls bunched to one side.

Terezie, Cornelia, and I try to be last filing into the dining room, but Hugh stops, bowing, motioning us forward. I politely simper but think: Why do I feel obligated to follow his direction? Why can’t I say that we want to wait so we’ll know where to sit after everyone’s settled?

He smiles. “After you, ladies,” he says, smug, oblivious.

When I see our parents’ round table, I act unfazed, but I picture us sitting there during Sam’s last dinner. Today, our parents and Sam are replaced by the Pelton children—same table, shifting faces—a subversion of
possession,
of
always
.

Randy serves our plates from the kitchen before I can remind her that I’m a vegetarian. I take a bite of cranberry sauce, queasy from the scent of roasted meat. Pumpkin pies and dessert plates wait on the double-hutch buffet along the back wall.

Cornelia seems to be enjoying herself with Kurt Jr. flirting on one side and Noreen watching adoringly from the other. If she’s pretending not to notice the tension between Terezie and my brothers, she’s doing a great job. She asks Kurt Jr. how Barbie and some pop star are alike. When he shrugs, she says, deadpan, “They’re both blonde, brainless, and made of plastic.” Even Kurt laughs, spewing sweet onion relish, making everyone howl again. “It wasn’t
that
funny,” Cornelia wheezes.

“Can’t help it,” he says, grinning, wiping his mouth. “I’m a sucker for dumb blonde jokes.”

I say, “You missed the point, A.K.”

“What’s A.K.?” Randy asks. Her voice hovers between pissed and party-mode.

Emma taps her fork against her knife.

“That’s what Sam called him, right Hugh?”

“Yeah,” Hugh says, stifling a smile, dropping his glance. He now thinks Sam exemplifies what happens to someone who rejects Christ.

Kurt hands Emma a roll, sets her fork next to her plate. “I’d forgotten about that,” he says. He speaks directly to Randy: “It stands for ass kisser.”

“Rad!” Kurt Jr. yells, hugging himself.

Kurt squints, scratches his head. “He said I’d wear a dress if Dad told me to.” He turns to me. “But I couldn’t. Sarah’s were too tight.”

Kurt Jr. peeks at Cornelia, giggles.

“I don’t get it,” Noreen says. “Mama? Boys don’t wear dresses. That’s stupid.”

“Anybody for more gravy?” Debbie says, standing. “What about you, honey?” she says to Noreen. “Want another roll?”

I stir my food, take a bite of relish. “This reminds me of Mother’s cooking,” I say.

“We have her oyster dressing every year,” Randy says. “I’ll give you the recipe, if you don’t have it.”

“Actually,” Debbie says, “Randy’s made your mom famous. She’s shared a lot of her recipes.” Randy straightens her napkin. “And she always puts your mom’s name in the title.”

Randy stands, picks up her plate, then grabs mine. She disappears into the kitchen. Terezie and Debbie gather more dishes and follow.

I smile at Cornelia, my ally. Like me, she’s hardly eaten anything.

My sisters-in-law begin serving pie, pouring coffee, bringing refills of milk for the children. As much as I resent the men sitting like Ayatollah, I grudgingly help. I do, however, insist that Cornelia stay put. Before we eat, everyone pauses for a tradition that began after I moved to Mexico. I’m starving. I take a bite of pie, then notice they have their hands in their laps.

“You can’t do that,” Noreen said. “You have to wait.”

“Oh,” I say, stupidly. “Sorry. I didn’t know.” What next? I think. This is, after all, the Bible belt. I foolishly thought that Hugh’s blessing, which was heartfelt and apropos, was a sufficient nod toward God and country. So okay, I’ll agree to say the Pledge of Allegiance—I’m as patriotic as anyone—or join hands and recite the Lord’s Prayer, but that’s where I draw the line. I’m not going to spout some homily or give testimony. They might as well ask me to speak in tongues. I can listen; yes, I’m actually good at that. In fact, watching this tribe will be interesting. Hugh takes the lead.

“I hope you ladies will bear with me,” he says, “’cause about now, everybody expects me to sing.”

“Yeah,” Noreen says, staring at me, “and you can’t eat.”

“She knows, honey,” Debbie says, squeezing her daughter’s hand.

“But I saw her. She took a bite.”

“Okay, thank you,” Debbie says. “Now let’s listen.”

Frowning, Cornelia picks up her fork, but when I shake my head, reassuring her, she puts it back.

Hugh continues, nonplussed. “I always thought it was a plot to keep me from preaching.”

Debbie pats Noreen. Kurt says, “Amen.”

“Amen!” Hugh repeats, chuckling. “Actually,” he clears his throat, “Debbie helped me pick this one. I wanted something everybody knew. It’s ‘Faith of Our Fathers.’”

“But
I
never heard of that,” Noreen says.

“Shh,” Debbie says, placing her arm around Noreen’s shoulders.

The sound that comes out of Hugh’s mouth doesn’t belong to him. I’ve heard the hymn; I know it by heart. This time, though, I expect a Jerry Lee Lewis version—energetic, jazzy—instead, a bassoon croons soft as silt. “Faith of our fathers, living still,” Hugh sings, his voice the Duomo bells surrounding Sam while he walks down an Italian street. The notes take shape, change colors, scattering like chips of jade, like nuggets of turquoise.

After lunch, I follow Hugh, Noreen, and Kurt Jr. to the dock to feed thawed, freezer-burned flounder to the pelicans. “Let me,” Noreen says, reaching into the bucket. Two Browns, a species recently removed from the endangered list, swim toward us. Swans with Donald Duck eyes and suitcase mouths, they are caricatures of prehistoric majesty.

“Try this, slackers,” Kurt Jr. calls, tossing the birds a pickle. They watch it arc then plunk into the water.

“No! You can’t do that,” Noreen shouts. “Daddy told us!” She pulls out a flounder, shaking it. “Only
fish
! He says! Like this.” When she pitches her offering a few feet away, the nearer bird swims up, cranes its serpentine neck over the dock’s edge, opens its mandibles like giant tweezers, then pins and flips the fish into its distensible pouch.

“Now you!” says Noreen, cavorting like a Shetland pony. “Here,” and she hands Kurt Jr. the bucket, while Hugh and I sit in rattan chairs under the awning.

When Kurt Jr. sails his flounder at the water, the second bird swims over, dives under, and scoops the target into its netlike pouch, the seawater draining from its mouth. Three white pelicans fly toward the children, so Kurt Jr. throws another flounder into the air, and one of the birds hovers, nabbing its catch, its colossal wings pedaling.

I remember seeing a pelican painted in the dome of the gothic church at Sam’s wedding, an image that sent me to the library to discover a second century Egyptian legend. A mother pelican, it said, plucked her breast to feed her young with her blood so they wouldn’t starve. I think of Ruby, her sacrifice. Even Dante and Shakespeare used the bird as a religious symbol. “Christ, the pelican,” I say to Hugh, wondering if he recognizes the reference.

“Like what tender tales tell of the pelican,” he says, stroking the skin above his almost invisible lip, “bathe me, Jesus Lord, in what Thy bosom ran.”

“Dante?” I ask, dubious.

“St. Thomas Aquinas. But you’re the scholar. I thought you’d know that.”

“I should have,” I say, annoyed. “I guess you’ve become the expert.”

“Maybe,” he says, looking away then turning back. “But I would like to know the real reason you brought those women.”

“My turn,” Noreen yells when Kurt Jr. tosses a fish in the air.

“Cornelia’s a wonderful girl, don’t you think?” I say.

“Yeah, great. And she’ll get her transplant, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Really? That’s not what Kurt says.”

“Look, Terezie just has to sign that agreement. It’s as simple as that.”

“It’s only money, Hugh. Why are you willing to let it endanger this girl’s life?”

“There’s an important principle at stake.”

“What, that Terezie’s no longer a member of the family? That Cornelia’s not related?”

“Yeah, that’s right. Those people aren’t my responsibility. My job is to be a good steward of God’s gifts. ‘A man can receive nothing, unless it has been given him from heaven.’ Through God’s grace, we were given our inheritance, Sarah, and now we’re obligated to be good managers of that.”

I’m not going to argue that Sam and his heirs deserve a share, and that God intended them to have it. Instead, I decide to try a different tack. “Wouldn’t Christ share what he had if it could save a life?”

“My obligation is to provide for my wife and daughter. God’ll take care of Terezie and Cornelia.”

“Maybe sharing our inheritance is part of God’s plan.”

“No,” he says, standing. “I see this as a test of my responsibility as a steward, and I won’t do anything that’ll hurt my family. I just won’t.” Turning, wiping his face again, he marches toward the children.

I hear their voices, the water’s slap against the dock, but the only image I can muster is Hugh’s face as a boy, confessing that he’s been with Sam right before he committed suicide. Hugh, I now think,
had
to know what Sam was thinking. Why in hell didn’t he stop what happened next?

“You’re all murderers,” Terezie yells, backing out the door. She holds Cornelia, who slumps, sobbing.

How, I wonder, does Terezie know what I’m thinking? All these years, I believed she blamed herself for Sam’s death.

“You’re the only one stopping that transplant,” Kurt says, watching Terezie motion me over.

That’s when I realize that I left them alone in the house.

“If you and your shyster brother weren’t so greedy,” Kurt says, leaning against the doorframe, “you could do the responsible thing and get your daughter into surgery.”

Cornelia wheezes and stumbles with Terezie toward the side of the house.

“What’s wrong with you?” I shout at Kurt. “I don’t know you people.”

C
HAPTER 22

A
S
I
PULL UP TO THE FARM GATE,
I notice it has the same chain, now casually wrapped around an adjacent pole. Once inside, I allow the car to creep down the dirt road. Buffle, goat weed, and blue stem grow alongside, overtaking the fields like a forest. From the plank bridge, the creek bed is stony, trashed, vanished as childhood.

A slight young woman has appeared on the road, obviously the buyer, who has seen me from the house. I step from the car, the door ajar, ignition dinging.

“Hello,” I say, extending my hand. She rakes me with her eyes: my cropped gray hair, jeans, stretched henley. I wonder how she feels about the sale’s postponement. Does she know about Terezie? Cornelia? What are her plans for the place? “I’m Sarah. My parents own a small farm up the road,” I lie, hoping she’ll speak freely. I point toward the highway.

“Oh.” She shades her eyes. “Hello.” Asian-American, probably Taiwanese.

“You’ll be neighbors,” I say. Her small fingers soften my formal handshake. “I heard the Peltons were selling the place.” In the distance, a broken fence droops against sagebrush, and behind, a ledge must be railroad track. I picture my grandfather’s peach trees. “I remember,” I say, “when another family lived here.”

“Would you like to see the house?” she asks. Broad-faced, dark-haired, she has ethnic features but no accent. Unlike me, she probably says
y’all
.

“Yes, thank you. I would.” I close the car door, and we step between wavelike ruts dried hard as limestone. “When will you begin work on the place?”

“We started Thursday, but we’ve been out here a lot, hoping, you know.” She turns, her elbows locked, her arms swinging. “My name’s Lilu, by the way.”