In Reach (4 page)

But, where is this going? If he asks, she would have to consider marriage, wouldn’t she? Otherwise, what is she doing? She’d forgotten how lovely and invigorating the feeling that you matter to someone in a special way. She does care for him. It’s too late to pretend otherwise, and she’s not going to lie to herself about it. Growing old might be less fearsome together.

She holds forth in this way, arguing with herself, refuting, rebutting, preparing, because any fool can see that they can’t simply go on riding into the sunset and kissing under the cottonwoods and parting in the back alley. Although, that is precisely what she wants. To simply go on, uncomplicated, like any young thing too naïve to consider the consequences of love.

One day Leland parks the three-wheeler under the stand of cottonwoods. It’s late afternoon, the time of long shadows when the sun drops toward the edge of the world. He spreads a blanket, tan and red striped. She holds her hand off the edge of the blanket, letting a clump of prairie grass tickle her palm.

“Can I ask you something, Janet?”

She nods. Here it comes, she thinks. She perks up, interested to see what answer she will give.

“What do you think about sex?” he says.

Well, that is a surprise. Janet almost laughs. “What do you mean?”

“Sex. Do you like it?”

“What kind of question is that?” She’s thinking there are some things you do, and you don’t have to talk about them.

“You like kissing, don’t you?”

“Well, Leland.” She pulls herself up, sits as tall as she can, wraps her arms around her bent knees. She prides herself on her flexibility. Not many women her age can sit like this. “I’m not dead.”

“That’s just it. We may not have that much time. I like you. When two people enjoy each other, they want to be close.”

“I think sex is a beautiful thing.”

“I’m glad you said that.”

“Between two married people.” She says this plain. She’s thinking this is an odd conversation for a courtship. At their age.

“Nobody said anything about marriage.”

“Oh.” Oh dear. Oh my. She hadn’t considered . . . How could he think that? How could he even imagine she’d . . . ? She looks away, embarrassed.

“Well, come on, now. We’re too old to complicate our lives like that.”

He’s put on his coaxing voice, the one he uses to nicker to the horses across the fence, get them to come for the apples in his hand. If he thinks she’ll come running across the pasture to eat out of his hand, he has another think coming.

She rises to her feet with as much dignity as she can muster. “Take me home, Leland.”

It’s ruined after that. Sex is all he can talk about. Every outing ends, sooner or later, with him trying to talk her into doing something she simply cannot, will not do.

“People will talk,” she says.

“Who cares?”

“I do. I have to live in this town.”

“We can go out of town.”

“I’m not going to sneak around.”

“You could just leave your back door unlocked,” he tries. “I could slip in and out, be gone by morning.”

She doesn’t dignify this with an answer.

“I don’t believe in sex outside of marriage,” she says.

“C’mon, Janet. Where’ve you been? This is the modern world.”

“I don’t care what others do. That’s their choice.”

“What are you afraid of? You’re not going to get pregnant.”

How dare he make her feel like an old relic? She looks him straight in the eye, defiant. “I don’t believe in it.”

“God gave us these desires. Why wouldn’t he want us to enjoy them?”

“Don’t blame God for this.”

“I’m not blaming anybody.”

“You’re saying it’s God’s fault. You’re using God to justify your own desires.”

“So are you.” His voice rises higher. It’s not a pleasant sound.

“I’m talking about my faith. Not desires.”

“You don’t have any desires.”

“That’s not fair.”

“I don’t think you do. I don’t think you feel anything.”

She says nothing. How can she say anything to this man?

“Now you’re mad.”

“I’m not mad.”

“You sure look mad.”

“I’m disappointed.”

“Esther never wanted sex,” he tells her one day.

She knows that’s a lie. She wonders if he has had affairs, all along. Justified them with his crazy talk of God-given desire.

She starts to resent how he doesn’t want to be seen with her. They attend the same church, but they never sit together. He greets her the same way he greets all the other widows, a curt nod as he passes by. Plus, he’s always talking about his investments. Why tell her he’s rich when he has no intention of sharing his wealth with her? And why, if he’s so loaded, didn’t he feel any obligation to pay back those farmers? He doesn’t want to risk dying first and have it all go to her instead of Rosalee. She knows what a prenuptial agreement is, but he’s beyond even that. He doesn’t want to share his home, his life. He wants a little back door hanky-panky, that’s all. She feels used. And dirty.

Her sister is of no help.

“You said you didn’t want to marry him.”

“I don’t.

“But you seem angry that he doesn’t ask you to marry him?”

“You’d be mad, too, if somebody you thought cared about you expected sex but no commitment.”

“Oh, I don’t know.”

“C’mon.”

“It’s the times. My own grandchildren . . .”

“That’s different.”

“If he asked, would you say no?”

“I guess we’ll never find out.” With that, Janet hangs up.

Not long after this conversation, Leland picks her up and tells her to scoot over by the door. “Don’t sit by me, if you don’t mean it.”

“All right.” She hugs the door, head turned away, her mind out the window and riding hard over turbulent waves.

He doesn’t take her to the farm. Instead, they drive out south of town to Courthouse and Jail Rocks, deserted sandstone monuments haunting the prairie. Legend has it that Indians used to keep prisoners here.

He stops the car, turns to look at her. “I thought I could wear you down,” he says.

Tight-lipped, she says, “Then you don’t know me very well.”

“No. I guess I don’t.”

She has nothing to say to that. They don’t look at each other.

“Hell,” he says. “I don’t even know if I can do it. Maybe I got too old.”

She has to laugh at that. He laughs, too. Then, it seems all right between them. They sit there a while, not bothering to get out of the car, enjoying the sagebrush and yuccas, the lone eagle soaring overhead, the grasshoppers springing from ragweed. He takes her home and drops her in the alley. They each smile, though he does not reach for her to kiss her. She gets out of the car and knows he will not call again.

Months go by, another Thanksgiving, then Christmas, Valentine’s Day. After Easter, she plants another garden, picks early radishes and lettuce. When her sister asks, “What ever happened to Leland?” she answers, “We’re friends.”

One day while shopping in the drug store for Q-tips and toothpaste, she hears that Leland has had a stroke. He’s lost the use of one side of his body, though they say his mind is good.

Janet frets over him, but she can’t drive. She hears he’s in a nursing home in Scottsbluff. One Sunday, her pastor stops her briefly after the Sunday service. Pastor Glen is a young man; people like him. He’s got a houseful of kids, and that’s always a good sign.

“Janet,” Pastor says. “I’m driving up to see Leland on Tuesday. I wondered if you’d care to ride along.”

She peers into the pastor’s face, sees only kindness. She should have known nothing is a secret in this town.

“I’d like that,” she says.

At the nursing home, the pastor visits for a few minutes, offers a prayer over Leland’s ruined body, then finds an excuse to leave the room. Janet pulls a chair next to Leland’s bed, puts her hand over his good hand. His other hand lies inert against his side. He has no use of one side of his body, but he’s propped up against the headboard.

“Janet. I’m glad to see you.”

He looks as though he might cry. Janet pats his hand. “Now, now Leland. I’m here.”

She looks around his room. Small, the way they are. Odors, something between disinfectant and musty, old body smell. On a set of built-in shelves, she sees he has a picture of the farm, Rosalee and her family.

“Remember when we picked raspberries?” he says.

“Of course, Leland.”

“And feeding the horses over the fence.”

She nods, though shame creeps through her, remembering how she thought of Leland coaxing her like those horses. Her throat feels full, and she’s afraid if she tries to speak, she’ll embarrass both of them.

“And the creek.” He waggles his eyebrows a bit. She’s relieved to see his rakish humor intact.

She rises and leans over to kiss his weathered and whiskery cheek. Low and in his ear, she says, “We had a wonderful summer.”

He grabs at her arm, his grasp surprisingly strong. His jaw trembles. “Janet, I don’t want to live like this.”

“Shhh.” She pats him on the back.

“I want to go home.”

“I know you do.”

“They won’t let me out of here.”

She struggles to quiet him, pats his back, but he grows only more distressed. She sits on the edge of the bed, puts her arm around his shoulders, tries to draw his head to her breast. He’s stiff and heavy, so she swings her legs up on the bed, and soon she’s lying with him, cradling him as best she can. He quiets, except for the tears soaking into her blouse front. “Now, now,” she says, and he’s calm as long as she doesn’t try to move away from him, which she has no intention of doing. She’s thinking it’s too bad that he didn’t die when he had the chance. He’s trapped now. He knows it, and she knows it, too.

Eventually, the pastor will come to collect her for the ride home or a nurse will want to take Leland to physical therapy, and they’ll find her in this undignified pose, lying like a schoolgirl on the edge of a man’s bed, her clothes twisted awry from the awkwardness of it. She will have to stand in front of them and say good-bye. Likely, she’ll note pity and condescension in their eyes, that special combo reserved for the very old, but what does any of that matter now? Might as well stop the clocks, turn off the telephones. What’s done is done, and she braces herself for all that may be required of her.

Waiting for the pastor, she strokes Leland’s cheek. “Oh, my dear,” she says. “My poor dear.”

Fire on His Mind

Afterward, Tom bought smoke alarms and put them in every room of the house. He staged fire drills day and night, especially night, when he stood with a stopwatch and timed Helen and his boys, Alex and Trent, while they tumbled out of beds and groped their way to the yard. Once he bolted the door from the outside to see if they would figure out what to do. When they didn’t emerge from the house, he was furious.

“What the hell are you thinking?” he stormed. They were gathered in the living room. Helen, eyes heavy with sleep, slumped on the tattered couch in a thin yellow tank top and drawstring cotton shorts. She’d thrown on a flowered robe to hide her nipples from the boys. That action alone cost precious seconds. He tipped the reading lamp to shine in their faces. Helen squinted and lifted a hand, but the boys, seven and nine, looked at him wide-eyed. Scared, and well they should be. They could have burned to death.

“Dad, what did you want us to do?” Alex asked.

“Break a window.” He heard himself shouting. “Pick up any goddamn chair and throw it through the glass.”

“But Dad, when I broke a window throwing a football, you got mad,” Trent said.

He shook his head, unable to believe they could not comprehend the seriousness of this. His wife, too. Nodding away there.

“When there’s fire . . . ,” he began.

“But it wasn’t a fire,” Alex said. “It was you blowing your whistle. Like last time.”

He knelt in front of them. He took each of his boys by the arm. Sitting there in their skivvies with knobby knees and scrawny chests, they looked like baby birds. “When you hear this whistle, I want you to see fire. I want you to smell fire. And then, you do whatever it takes to get the hell out of this house. Now, am I clear?”

The boys glanced at each other. He knew that look. In another five, six years they’d be looking at each other like that all the time, as if their old man was loco. Let them.

The first week he took a lot of showers. Washed himself over and over and still could not get the stench out of his hair. When he’d finally found those two teenagers huddled together behind a closet door, their skin had been black and crispy. He didn’t tell Helen that. He’d reached out, his volunteer fireman’s glove awkward and thick and protecting him, and the boy’s shoulder caved like a marshmallow cooked too long over coals. That crinkled coating that slakes away.

People talked about it for days. At the lunch counter in Brenda’s Café, in the vestibule of the Methodist Church, on the four corners of Main and Elm. Sweet old Mrs. Willow walked it into Tom’s pharmacy.

“Too bad about that poor family, wasn’t it?” she said.

He busied himself behind the counter. In his white lab coat and dark framed glasses he looked ordinary enough, his sandy hair short and neatly combed.

“Did you know them?”

Tom shook his head.

“Shirttail relation to the Slokems,” Mrs. Willow said. “Only been here a couple of months.”

Tom handed her the usual blood pressure medication.

“I heard the mother ran straight through the fire with the two little ones. She must’ve thought those older kids would follow.” She blinked at him once, twice, her eyes magnetized behind thick lenses.

“Will that be all?” He stood at the old-fashioned cash register, his hand poised to ring up the sale. Normally he loved the pearl keys, the ka-ching of the tray opening. He found comfort in the swivel stools and soda fountain, the amber and liquor green medicine bottles displayed on shelves. He’d collected these relics himself from small towns throughout the panhandle. Today, however, they only reminded him that he could not recreate the past. He could no more resurrect the simpler, sweeter time he’d seen in Norman Rockwell paintings than he could bring those two teenagers or his own dead parents back to life.

“Why didn’t they go out the back door?” Mrs. Willow waited for his reply.

Sweat trickled from his armpits. The air stale and full of soot. “I don’t know,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “They probably died before the fire got to them. Smoke inhalation.”

At night, with fire on his mind, he tucked his boys in bed. He hovered over them, one bunk, then the other, smoothed cowboy sheets around slim shoulders, brushed cheeks with his fingers.

“Dad?” Alex said.

“Yeah.”

“You said we can’t take anything with us.”

Tom hesitated. He didn’t want them having nightmares. Still.

“That’s right.” He sat on the edge of the lower bunk.

“What about Bilko?” Bilko, the fat calico cat.

“Nope. Everybody gets themselves out. That’s the way it works.”

“But, Dad,” Trent said, from the upper bunk. “What if I fell down and broke my leg? Would you help me?”

He stood, reached out, and smoothed the wrinkles between his son’s eyes with his thumb. “’Course I would. It’s my job to help you. I’m a fireman.” The grin on Trent’s face, goofy and sweet, filled him with despair.

“Come to bed, Tom,” Helen said. She leaned against the doorjamb, arms crossed. He lay sprawled on the couch in the back den, the
TV
muted but flickering with bad news. He hadn’t been able to sleep. He got up and slathered Vicks under his nose to mask the putrid odor of smoldering flesh. He made hot milk but could not drink it. He did forty push-ups.

“They shouldn’t let people live in those shacks,” he said. He could see the worry in Helen’s eyes, the tension around her mouth. He’d been telling her for days not to drive without her seat belt. To get the carbon monoxide levels checked in the house. To wear double gloves when she drew blood from hospital patients. On her days off, he didn’t want her going down in the basement if he wasn’t home. What if an electrical wire came loose, and she dangled her fingers in the laundry tub?

Helen held out her hand. He let her lead him to their room, up the stairs. He slid in bed beside her and feigned sleep. He waited until Helen’s breathing deepened, then opened his eyes. Nightly now, his parents’ accident invaded his dreams. He’d been away in college at the time, but lately he watches by the side of the road or floats above the car. He hears his mother scream, but he can do nothing, and then he wakes more wrung out than when he went to bed. Not my fault, not my fault, Tom muttered now, as he propped himself up with two pillows, cocked his ear to listen for intruders, and waited for dawn.

Three weeks after the fire he drove past the remains of the shack. The concrete foundation lay exposed, littered with blackened wood and debris. Particles of ash drifted through the air whenever the breeze stirred.

He stopped his car, covered his nose and mouth with a handkerchief. He rolled down the window to get a clearer view but saw no one. Not that he expected to. The mother and two younger children were long gone. The itinerant husband, too.

He noticed a car he’d not seen before parked at the neighboring shack. A maroon hatchback Focus. Nice car, for drifters. He studied the front door, the jagged tear in the screen. Through the window he caught the blue light of a television.

The front door opened and a boy stepped out, a kid about Trent’s age, red hair, skinny, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans. He carried a baseball bat. The kid started swinging the bat wildly, not like he was lining up for a pitch, just flailing away at the air. He took a swipe at the car parked in the drive. Whack. Then straightened up and looked furtively toward the house. When no one came running out the door, he took another swing at the fender. Whack. Even from his seat in the car, Tom could tell he’d left a couple good dents. The kid swung and then wiped his nose. Christ. These people.

Over pancakes, he warned them. “Stay away from that new kid at school.” Helen looked up from the lunches she was packing. She slathered minced ham with mayonnaise, a spawning ground for bacteria.

“He’s in my class,” Trent said.

“See,” Tom said, not at all sure what he meant.

“What’s wrong with him?” Trent said.

Tom stopped to consider, swirled sludgy coffee around his mouth to buy some time. “He could be dangerous.”

“Tom!” Helen, up on her high horse again.

“Look, I know some things.”

“What things?” She pointed her loaded paring knife at him.

“What’s his name?” Alex asked.

“Manson,” Trent said.

“You mean, that’s his last name?” Tom wiped at his coffee mustache with the back of his hand.

“First. He said he was named after Charles somebody.”

“Jesus H,” Tom muttered. That look again from Helen.

“Jesus H,” Alex echoed. Tom reached behind Trent and bopped Alex on the back of the head. At the same time he raised his eyebrows and nodded toward Helen, and Alex grinned. Tom put his hand over the sharp pain in his chest.

The call came from Margaret Seward, the principal over at the school. Later he wouldn’t remember what she’d said. He heard Trent’s name, the alarm in her voice, and he bolted. In the tiny parking lot behind the drug store, his car was wedged in by Dr. Feldman’s monstrous Buick. Tom crashed his fist down on a rear fender, yelped in pain, and took off running. For eight blocks he carried an image of Trent bloody and gasping. All it takes is a baseball in the throat. A science experiment gone amok. They should have homeschooled the boys.

He rounded the corner, saw a police car in front of the school, and plunged into the building. Ellen met him in the foyer, her face pasty above her white uniform like a mask on a Halloween nurse. She put her hand on his chest and said, “Breathe.”

He raised his arm to brush her off, but the pain doubled him in half. Her hand moved to his back. “Breathe, Tom.”

“Is he dead?” he managed to croak before coughing.

“No, no. God help us. He’s in the
OR
.”

He lifted his head, and through the window into the school office he saw Trent sitting on a couch. Margaret was perched beside him, alert and wary, watching him the way you might a
foreigner or a poisonous insect. Trent’s head was down, but he wasn’t bleeding. He wasn’t even crying.

Tom lifted his finger and pointed. “He’s right there.”

“Not Trent. The other boy. He’s in the
OR
.”

“What other boy?” Tom said.

“Didn’t they tell you what happened?”

He shook his head, still fighting for breath. “All I heard was Trent in trouble, and I took off.”

Margaret stepped to the door and motioned for them to come in. She’d moved Trent into the secretary’s office. Jeffrey Klotsch, wearing his police uniform, stood with arms folded, working hard to look stern and professional. Tom had gone to school with Jeffrey and knew that he’d flunked math two years in a row.

“Jeffrey,” Tom said. Jeffrey nodded, but his eyes fished around the room.

“What the hell’s going on here?” Tom said. “I want to see my son.”

“Why don’t we all sit down,” Margaret said.

The women coaxed him with murmurs and tugs on his arm. Jeffrey loomed there, not budging until Tom lowered himself to the couch beside Ellen. Margaret sat across from them. Jeffrey plopped his overweight frame on a chair set at a right angle. Tom watched Jeffrey out of the corner of his eye while Margaret explained the situation.

Trent’s class had gone to the river on a science expedition. On the way back, Manson walked ahead. The second graders were at recess, and Alex had bent down to pick up a leaf when his jacket caught on the fence. Manson bent over to help him, and that’s when Trent entered the school yard. Trent yelled at Manson to leave his brother alone, and when Manson didn’t move away, Trent hit him with a rock.

“A rock?” Tom’s voice rose with relief. “That’s what all this is about? A kid throwing a rock? Jeffrey, how many times did I
heave a rock at you? It was a freak thing, right? He couldn’t have known.”

“He didn’t throw it,” Margaret said. “He’d collected it from the walk. It was big. And he brought it down on Manson’s head.”

“Oh, my God,” Ellen said.

“Trent hasn’t said a word.” Margaret talking again. Tom forced himself to concentrate. “There was a lot of confusion, panic. Manson fell over. He just lay there in a pool of blood.”

“Head wounds bleed.” Ellen sounded desperate. “Even when they aren’t serious.”

Without speaking, Tom tried to send his wife a message. Shut up, Ellen. Don’t say anything incriminating. Don’t apologize. Don’t admit.

“Can I see my boys?” Ellen asked.

My boys. Already, he was a ghost.

He followed her, of course. He went with his wife to see their children. The minute Ellen stepped through the door Alex threw his arms around her legs, sobbed into her thighs. She patted him on the back and murmured mother things. Tom stood watching, his hands twitchy and heavy on the ends of his arms. “Hey, Buddy,” he managed to say, when Alex glanced up at him.

“You go with Daddy,” Ellen said to Alex. He didn’t want to, but in the end he relented. Tom walked with him out the door and home. Alex wouldn’t hold his hand. It took them half an hour. When they got there they made hot chocolate, neither speaking, and then the chocolate got cold sitting on the table, and Tom asked Alex if he’d like to take a nap. Alex said he would. He lay down on the bottom bunk, and when Tom looked in on him fifteen minutes later, he was asleep with his thumb in his mouth. Tom watched him for a while from the doorway, then edged the door closed and stood with his forehead leaning against it.

That was nothing, though, compared to Trent. He walked in
with his mother. She had her hand on his shoulder, all Big Nurse, guiding him. His lights were out, a zombie-child who moved like a nursing home patient. Tom tried to pull his son into his arms, but Trent stood stiff as a stop sign, his head thrown aside. Tom rubbed his open hand over his mouth. Ellen walked Trent to their bed, laid him down, and covered him with a blanket. His eyes were open and staring when she closed the door.

“What’s the matter with him?” he asked.

Ellen leaned back against the wall, her body sucked in and arched away from him. “Shock, partly. He’ll be worse when it wears off.”

“Worse,” he said.

They sat up through the night, he in the den, she in the living room. He waited for Ellen to accuse him, but she didn’t. She said nothing, nothing at all. They were polite when they passed each other on the way to the phone. Without talking about it, one or the other called the hospital every hour.