A gust of wind kicks up a spray of dust. Irving turns his back to it, rubs his eyes. He thinks about his father in Miami. It’s the same sun. It could even be the same gust of wind that started out somewhere down there and wound its way up to him. Irving sets his jaw. He’s been wronged. He despises his father, who could be rich, chewing a cigar tip, wearing a white hat, or worse, he could be a bum, having abandoned his family for nothing more than Miami’s staggering heat, a wood-warped dock. All Irving knows is that there was an elephant hauling wagons like a workhorse, and a worthless trunk, and his father could have gotten back in the car on the dock and come home, but didn’t. He made the wrong choice, and yet there are right choices laying there right next to the bad ones. His father is a weak man. Lucy is weak, too, sometimes lavish and other times mean. But it is her weakness that made her leave; it was his father’s weakness that made him stay on a dock, sending Irving’s mother home alone.
Irving is tired of these people. It takes inordinate strength not to take a train to Wheeling, not to leave your wife and children, but to do this: push the pram to the butcher’s and home again, to iron the damp wash after tending the garden, to toil, to appear every day to work, toting laundry, to pat the outside of the truck door like it’s a horse and pull out, as Art does now, to stay and stay and stay. Thirst has no season. Irving decides to live his life in defiance of his father, in opposition to Lucy’s restless, aching soul.
He will do this: drive the southern part of this route, fill the truck with gas, and not keep on going to Wheeling, to Miami, but circle back to this dirt lot, park his truck, and go back to his apartment, the blinds shut tight against the sun. And he may swell with pride, he may just feel like he is a hero, returning to the land he’s spent his life defending. It is something so simple, so pure an emotion of resistance and success, only he could understand how victorious, how heroic it is to come home and turn on a lamp, the same small, glass lamp, day after day.
3
Alma has a pair of shoes and a box of oranges. The oranges are tough-skinned, as leathery as the shoes, and she wonders if there will be much juice in them. She imagines the tough, stringy pulp, the sections that become unswallowable wads to be spit out. She has a toothache, a new rot. The idea of chewing something hard pains her.
“Maybe the orphans could use these oranges for baseballs,” she says to Lettie, trying to be lighthearted. But Lettie is lingering behind.
“I don’t think I’m going to go. Tell Willard to bring himself here to the car.”
Alma wants Lettie to come with her. She wants the nun to take a look at her, to say something about virtue. She’s become aware that her daughter is slipping out at night. Once Alma woke to an empty bed and waited for her until almost dawn. Grass stains on her dresses, a rise in her cheeks, a new way of cocking her head. Lettie should know better, having seen so many lovesick women. She should never want to fall for a man. Alma looks out to the garden. She sees Willard’s face shaded by a wide hat. “He’s awful serious about what he’s doing. He may not want to stop. He’s like that, you know. You should come with me and say hello to him.”
“No,” Lettie says. “Tell him to wave.”
Alma nods. She won’t disturb Willard just yet. He sometimes gets cross if he isn’t allowed to finish what he’s set out to do. She leaves the box of oranges and the shoes beside the stone entranceway and walks out to the chicken-wire fence. Sister Margaret is there in her black habit, standing in the chicken coop, hands clasped in front of her, patiently. The nun is always patient, even with this wild ruckus of hens at her feet. A young novitiate in a white habit is flapping, much like a giant bird herself, after the chickens, which squawk and flutter. The light is dusty with risen feathers.
“You must be confident,” Sister Margaret shouts. “You must let the chickens know that you know what’s best for them.” The novitiate, rakish and pallid, looks up blankly. Sister Margaret reaches forward into a group of head-bobbing hens, picks one up by the neck, and, with a firm twist, the chicken’s soft white body circles. The neck breaks. It was one swift motion, like someone cranking an old car. Sister Margaret holds up the twitching bird. She hands the bird to the novitiate, who looks ready to cry but takes it by the neck, quickly supporting its body in the cradle of her elbow. “Next time, you’ll come with me again. All you need is confidence by way of practice and experience.”
Sister Margaret walks out of the pen, nods to Alma, brushing feathers from her habit. “Is it Tuesday already? Time has a way of going quickly. Sometimes I wonder what year it is.”
Time doesn’t work this way for Alma. Sometimes she feels herself willing a minute to fall away. She’s learned, though, how to pass it as best she can, like an invalid, an inmate, by remaining within the bullish trudge from task to task. She wishes that life could be an accumulation of actions, but even in this thought, she finds herself guilty of stepping back. Her heart is afflicted, and she suffers these small relapses. Memory and her mind’s inclination to dilate are to blame. She battles against them. Alma says, “You move in there like a farmer’s wife.”
“It’s the other life I could have had. I was raised on a farm near a lake, and after working, we would swim. I was a fast swimmer. I liked to hide underwater. I thought that there I could feel the pressure of God’s love. To become a nun, I gave up a husband easily enough. I never wanted one. And children, because, well, I’m still surrounded by them.” She pauses and looks out toward the river with its clipping current. “But to give up the feel of my body underwater and then buoyant, that was a trying sacrifice. There is a swim teacher in Uffington to teach the children—Willard, too—to swim in a pond. Sometimes I go and watch. We have to teach them to swim, because of where we’re situated. We’d lose too many to the Monongahela.” She turns quickly and looks at Alma, a cursory glance. “We all have other lives we’ve lived and ones that we gave up living along the way. I imagine you do, too.”
They walk together up toward the convent. Alma must nearly jog to keep up with the nun’s long stride. “I worked at the hosiery mill. I could have kept that up and have died of pneumonia by now.” She imagines her lungs packed with wet cotton.
“It is respectable work.”
“It didn’t suit me.”
“A suitable path. I didn’t choose the expected one, either. You and I have much in common, more than anyone could ever imagine.”
This is the way they talk to each other, two bullheaded women, but more than that, two leaders, two heads of state, taking a promenade on the grounds. She feels like they are a pair of bishops, so chummy they need not talk about business. They can talk about most anything. Alma enjoys it. When she’s with the nun, she realizes what it’s like to be around herself, for other people, the girls in the house, for example, some of whom get giddy, others abrasive. She likes the way Sister Margaret tells her things, confides in her. There’s a softness the nun has allowed by conjuring up the picture of her as a young girl, a fast swimmer slapping across a lake, dipping under to hide from the world. Alma is certain she doesn’t tell everyone these things. They are secrets that for some reason, the nun shares with Alma.
“I brought you all some oranges and thought the children could use some shoes. And this.” Alma pulls out a thick envelope, but Sister Margaret raises her hand, and Alma shoves it back into her purse.
They walk into the dim convent. A nun is leading two single-file lines of boys and girls down the hall, an echo of shuffling feet. The two nuns nod at each other. The children are silent in navy blue uniforms. There’s a slowness, a melancholy in the children like a troupe of show people with no one to do tricks for. She recalls Mr. Eddie, Mr. Bucci, Nettie, Wall-Eye, his hoarse parrot, a pathetic troupe, old, garish, tatty with chipped gilt costuming. She’s glad she wasn’t there to see the show close. She wonders if they still have a show, their dour flouncing. The orphans are carrying small brass bells with black wooden handles, but each has them cupped underneath so the bells are quiet, except for a consta
nt faint clicking, like a chorus of death beetles.
Sister Margaret opens the door to her office. And once the door is shut, she holds out her hand. Alma gives her the envelope.
“It’s thick. Business must be booming. I suppose hard times don’t stop men.”
“Sometimes it causes more of a rush.”
Sister Margaret puts the envelope in the desk drawer. Alma doesn’t like the office. She always remembers leaving the children, the feeling of having Lettie pried from her chest, a gaping emptiness, a moist dress front, instantly cold against her skin, and then later knowing that Willard would not be coming home, that he would stay here forever perhaps. She knows that the official business conducted here is desperate. She’s never seen a lovely young barren couple, smiling, holding hands as they assess children at play. She wonders if those couples exist.
The nun always invites her in. Sometimes they have tea. This time Alma has come with questions, none of which are formed, but she’s carried them in, an armful, and she’s certain the nun can tell.
“What is it?” Sister Margaret asks.
“It’s going to be fall, again, and an ugly fall. The ugliest.”
“Yes, it’s dreadful. Sin and disaster. And babies, always babies. They don’t stop just because it seems like the end. In fact, I think when people are most frightened, they become like rabbits. Our businesses boom on similar clocks.” She sighs. “But that’s not it. You’re not here to discuss the world, are you? Not today.”
“No, but I am here to discuss children.”
“Willard is fine. He’s doing well. He’s a great help. Our muscle, our reliable muscle.”
“No, it’s Lettie. She’s gotten too old.”
The nun looks up now, squints over her bifocals. Her face pinches itself, a purse cinched to a tight 0. She nods solemnly. “How old is she now?”
“Fifteen.”
She looks at the floor. “And have any of the men hurt her?”
It’s been clear for some time that the nun knows what Alma does for a living, but this is the first time Sister Margaret has mentioned the men in the house directly. “No, no,” Alma says. “Nothing like that. But I think that she is sneaking off with someone.”
The nun stands up and begins to pace. “I know that you may think that I take your offerings for the orphanage while at the same time I’d call it all sinful, but there are many paths to sin in this world and very few choices for women. It’s your duty to keep Lettie safe. I was raised by my grandmother. I had a solitary childhood. She protected me by isolation. Because my father was gone, working far off, and my mother was dead.” Here she paused, just briefly, a hitch, but only that, and then she forged on. “No one ever told me, exactly, but this is what I’ve learned: My father killed my mother. He beat on her till there was nothing left to beat on. My grandmother couldn’t have admitted this truth—not really—to herself, not to me. And by the time I was old enough to ask, she was an invalid.” She looks at Alma now. “This is not something I would confess to the young novitiate who couldn’t kill a chicken. I wish my mother had killed him. This wish was the beginning of how I came to understand the burning work of prayer. I believe he beat her more because she resisted more, after I was born.”
The story doesn’t surprise Alma. She’s already glimpsed something of herself in Sister Margaret, and it must be this part, a shiny, dark reflection, the stilled center of grief. “Is that why you became a nun, to protect yourself?”
Sister Margaret lifts the curtain. “There she is. She’s walking down to the dock. She has gotten too old. That’s certain. I think that it may become dangerous.”
“I suppose you want her to become a nun.” Alma has never thought of Sister Margaret as evangelical, but all nuns want there to be more, and so it came out.
“That would be nice, but I don’t think this life is for her.”
“Then what, Sister?”
“I couldn’t bring my mother back to life. But I have found that sometimes prayer helps in a situation like this. An answer will come.”
Alma wants to tell the nun about her own mother and the Prophet, who was killed, about her father, the buried tip of his tongue. She can smell the upturned earth, see the exact spot in the yard. She would like her father to appear, or the Prophet, some close approximation. Her mother taught her that love can be found in unlikely places. She has no time for this nostalgia, this desirousness. She prepares to go, gathers her purse, stands up. “I should be off. I need to talk to Willard. He’s expecting me, I figure.”
The nun has moved from the window, the black bell of her skirt slightly lifted in the back as she looks out, one hand holding up the curtain. “She’s a beauty now. I didn’t notice it before. Be careful. And remember: If a child asks for a fish, the parent does not give it a snake. If a child asks for an egg, the parent does not give it a scorpion. Ask and you shall receive. Knock and the door will open.”
Alma says, “I understand what you’ve said about your mother and your father.”
The nun lets the curtain drop but doesn’t turn to face her. “That’s why I told you.”
The sky has clouded over, dun colored, like the breast of a bird. The wind flips up the brim of Willard’s hat. He’s wearing knickers. In fact, he’s never worn long pants. He’s still a boy, a big boy with chubby knees, red from kneeling, holding up the pressure of his wide belly. Sometimes Alma finds him grotesque. His mouth never shuts all the way. He swallows loudly. The wet pink of his full inner lip always shines with spit. His eyes are slow. They blink too hard. He’s awkward, lumbering, and excitable. Sometimes he claps his hands and it looks ridiculous, like a full-grown man acting like a bunny. Alma wonders if she’ll find him grotesque today or if he will only soften her heart. He can do that, too.
She notices right away that his face is no longer covered in soft, downy fur. He’s clean shaven, and she wonders who taught him this. She imagines one of the nuns going to town to buy him a razor. It should have been his daddy, Alma thinks. Oddly, it doesn’t make him appear more grown-up. He looks like a chubby baby with his smooth, windblown cheeks. He’s pulling up weeds poking up around cages of tomato plants. His hands are quick, although his eyes are closed, his face held up to the sky. Alma stands in his light. The shadow moves across him, and his eyes blink open as if he’s just awakened from a lovely dream.
“What are you doing?” Alma asks.
“Pulling up the chokers.”
“Why are your eyes shut like that?”
“Because I can do it with my eyes shut. Just because I can.”
“Oh.” She sits down awkwardly, drawing in her breath, which hurts her sore tooth. The grass pricks her legs.
“I can feel the furry stems of some of them. Others are wiry like grass. In the flowers, I can tell the color by touching them.” He points down the wall to a bunch of dark purple and light pink cosmos, tall, bending over with their own weight. “But now I’m learning only about vegetables. Them children need the food.” Willard always calls the orphans “them children.” He isn’t one of them, and he likes to make that clear. “Where’s Lettie at?”
“She went down to the dock.”
“She hates that old dock. But I’m not afraid of water. I have swim trunks and all.”
“Do they teach you how to pray out here, Willard? All that kind of thing?”
“They do. I know my prayers. But I like to come out here when I’ve got troubles.”
“What kind of troubles?”
“The same kind everybody’s got. I don’t know how many kinds there are.”
Alma looks over her shoulder and sees Lettie walking quickly from the dock to the car parked on the dirt driveway. Her arms are crossed. She wipes her face like she’s been crying. Alma wonders what draws that girl to water when she knows it will only upset her. Alma thinks about what the nun just told her: the snake, the spiny scorpion, and the glinting fish, the egg, whole and white, perfect. She wonders what her children have asked of her, and what she?
??s delivered. She knows that Sister Margaret is talking about God, but Alma worries that she’s given her children poisonous creatures. This has been her strategy, to show her children evil, at an arm’s distance, so that they can spot it before it bites. She would have felt dishonest if she had only handed them fish and eggs. Willard is different. He can be sheltered. But Lettie and Irving live in the world. She has been preparing them with knowledge of sin, and is that so bad? She’s done it the only way she’s known how. “You should wave to Lettie,” Alma says.
Willard jumps up and calls out to her. She picks up her head at the noise. He waves both arms in the air over his big head. She smiles, pulls her hair out of her face, and lifts her hand. But she doesn’t come over. She strides to the car and shuts the door.
“I should go,” Alma says.
“Wait, wait, now.” Willard’s knees are dirty and pocked from sharp pebbles. He kneels in front of the cosmos—it looks grief-bent to Alma suddenly—takes off his hat, letting it sit beside him on the grass. He closes his eyes. His fingers find a stem, shimmy up it, and lightly touch the petals. He leans forward and lets them brush against his cheek. He says, “This one is darker than the others.” And he’s right. It’s a deep purple, like the sky before a downpour.
Alma leans over him, holds his massive head in her hands. She can feel the bones of his skull. She bends and kisses his thick matt of hair. And she imagines what would happen if he were to die before her. If his heart, lodged deep in his broad, fatty chest, were to give out on him, she would be the one thrown out of the church for wild, heartbroken, almost lustful, mourning. She would pound her chest and throw herself on his casket. She imagines the room of nuns, the air thick with the heavy scent of flowers. The orphans, and the crazy mother, blinded by this pain.
“You know how I know about the colors?” he asks, as if he’s just performed a magic trick.