Alma can feel Henry’s anxiousness. His knees are jiggling. His hands tap the wheel. She knows he wants to be cut loose, can imagine what it will feel like to have all these little cords that keep him staked down finally cut. It’s nearly midday now, and they haven’t even started out, not really. They pass an old wooden derrick. Once there’d been a pumper with its slow nods, needling the earth for oil. They’ve struck a vein and now pipe it underground to a central spot where it’s tanked and hauled to the Monongahela River to be shipped off. Alma wonders how long before the mountains pucker and sag, fall in on themselves, disgusted, bereft, exhausted. She doesn’t want to be here to see it. Her own body has begun to ache and grouse. She glances up at the horizon, the range’s womanly curves. Stripped to a bare clutch of trees. She remembers climbing as a girl, finding star flowers, trout lily, hedge nettle. She wonders if you can still find those woodsy blooms or if the loggers have erased them, too. It is a sad sight, the mountain being gutted. It is a sign, to her, of lusty greed.
Her mother’s house is in the country, a one-bedroom shack with a rusty tin roof. There’s a wash line strung with a set of sheets, and a tub in the front yard, a pair of mangy, baleful, bench-kneed dogs on the porch, one with a balding rump, too old and deaf to bark. She spots her mother on the porch, peeling potatoes. Henry kills the engine.
“This won’t take but a minute,” he says, meaning, Stay put.
“I’ll stand back. It’s better if I’m nearby, harder to deny me.”
Henry pauses, nods grudgingly. He walks up nervously, and Alma hangs back. The old woman never looks up from the sharp knife. She nips off the potato’s purplish white clawlike roots, digs the knife in to cut out the eyes.
“Hey there, Miss Narcissus.”
“What do you want?”
Henry smiles sheepishly, a practiced look of boyishness, but she doesn’t even glance up to see it. “Now, why would you say a thing like that?”
“’Cause you want something.”
Henry sets one foot up on the first step, his hand in his pocket. Alma imagines he’s cupping his fingers and thumb around the fat C of money from Sir Lee, his money now, clenching and unclenching. “Actually, what we have here is a real opportunity. A trunk of jewels, from a sunken ship, in Florida, and the law says the trunks are sealed, and we’re planning on staking our claim. But, as you see, we are in need of your assistance, running the boardinghouse, helping with Lettie and Willard. Irving is able to be on his own. He’s no trouble.”
Narcissus chips off the potato’s peel with quick strokes. She wipes her nose with the ball of her hand. She looks up, seeing Alma standing a few paces back. She asks Henry, “Now why do you suppose they say ‘Nutty as a fruitcake?”
Henry squints at her. “Excuse me, ma’am?”
“‘Nutty as a fruitcake.’ Why do they say that?”
Henry laughs a bit, says, “Well, on account of the fact that there’s a lot of nuts in a fruitcake.”
“Then why do they call it fruitcake?” Narcissus says.
“I don’t know, Miss Narcissus.”
“You are a foolish man, and I’ve had my fill of foolish men.” She drops a slick, bare potato into a pot at the side of her seat. It slides from her hand as quick as a fish. She coughs. “I ran mine off, you see.”
“Is that right?” Henry says, shaking his head. Alma knows that Henry has heard the story differently. “Well, let me tell you this: I am a man now, Narcissus, and I won’t be called foolish. I will talk to you as a man talks to a woman.”
Narcissus looks up at him, scoots the bucket of dusty potatoes out of the way, as if she’s about to stand, but doesn’t. She looks Henry in the eye. “Get off my porch, or I will take a gun from in the house and shoot you, the way a woman shoots a man.”
Henry’s foot drops off the step. His gaze drifts around the yard. Alma stares at her mother—her dauntless brow, proud knotted nose. She is a dry hull with a dark withered center still corroding, distilling to some essential core. Henry could pick her up and snap her over his knee, but there’s a steeliness to her, and he knows where she keeps her gun. He knows, just as well as Alma does, that she’d as soon pull it out and shoot him as spend the rest of the day peeling potatoes, because when you’ve been cast out, as she has, you’ve got a certain freedom. You don’t have to live in fear of being cast out. She’s wild. He’s afraid of her. Alma is afraid of her, too. He tips his hat. He bows, just a small nervous bow—not all the way, just half. He catches himself in it, tipping his hat, bowing, which is what he said he would not do. And yet he says, “Good day,” just like that, a reflex of manners. He’s embarrassed. He hates himself for it, hates that his wife has seen it. He skulks to the car, slams the door so hard the metal frame shimmies.
Alma doesn’t say anything to her mother. What is there to say? She walks to the car, too, slides into her seat, shutting the door.
Henry is fuming. “She’s damn crazy. You know that?” His speech growls to a mumble.
Alma is nearly empty. She can no longer muster those strong emotions for her mother. It’s as if there’s a knob and she’s tightened it. She feels sorry for Henry. It’s plain on her face. And he despises her pity. She knows it but cannot help herself. She pities herself, too, and the children.
Henry says, “It can’t all be my fault. I can’t be held accountable for everything. If the children cry, if it rains, if the car gets caught up in a tornado, if we never make it to Florida at all. I haven’t failed already. We haven’t even left town.”
But Alma knows he’s saying that he thinks it is his fault and that he is already failing. But she won’t say a word. She looks at him big-eyed. Tonight she’ll let him make love to her in the car, where they’ll probably sleep on the side of the road to save the money, and she’ll say, It’s all right. It’s all right. And he’ll have to take it. Her look will say, But I love you anyway, despite your faults, or even maybe—and she admits this only to herself—I love you because of them. But he can sense it, can’t he? Her pity?
Alma realizes that there are two trunks. One is hers. It’s filled with junk. A grave disappointment. But there is another trunk that spills over with jewels. It will make them rich. This is Henry’s trunk. And it exists just as wholly as Henry exists. Just as wholly as she exists. For now it seems her choice. It seems she can choose the trunk. She can reach out and point to the future she wants.
They don’t say anything all the way to the orphanage. In the backseat, Lettie sniffles and Willard hums, more a leak of music from his head than any real song. When they pull up to the orphanage, Henry says, “I’ll go in. I’ll do it.”
“No,” Alma insists. “No, no. I’ll do it.”
The orphanage is the way Alma remembers it, having passed by as a child on the way to town—the dark stone building with two separately fenced-in swing sets, a few sagging, nearly airless balls. There’s a grotto of Mary, a once-white statue, pensive, burdened by soot, her arms down, palms open, surrendered to the elements, slouched and centuried, surrounded by weedy fields. There’s a chicken coop, a bridge leading to an old wooden railed-in dock floating in the ill-tempered Monongahela.
Lettie doesn’t resist. She goes weak. Alma has to pick her up and carry her to the dark mahogany doors. Willard heaves the two sacks of clothes over his shoulder. They ring the bell. Feet shuffle to the door. It opens and a nun appears. She’s young, squat, her cheeks pink and dry. The door is heavy for her. She leans into it to keep it from sliding her out of the way. She actually grunts, pushing her weight into it, and she’s a little fearful, shifty-eyed, as if the door could push her out of the convent and slam shut and there would be no one to let her back in, as it’s her duty to answer the door.
“Good day. Can I help you?” She’s trying to be gracious under the strain.
Alma looks back at Henry, who’s staring off at the chickens. A breeze kicks up the front of his hair. “I would like to drop my children for a stay. We don’t have anywhere else to leave them.”
/>
“You’ll need to talk to Sister Margaret. Follow me.” The nun puts her back to the door, taking small backward steps to push it the rest of the way open. Once inside, she seems so light she nearly skips down the shiny stone hallway, lined with boxes of old clothes and cans of soup. It smells of ammonia, but beneath that an old clammy mustiness. There’s no sign of children aside from a slight stuffiness, the earthy smell of children’s oily heads and pasty hands. There are pictures on the walls of nuns, famous ones, no doubt, kneeling in prayer, angels circling above, each with bright spears of light beaming from their heads.
The nun stops at another dark mahogany door. Alma’s dress front is wet now with Lettie’s tears and snot. The girl’s cheek is pressed to her collarbone. She’s pushing so hard that the bone is sore. Alma’s arms grow tired. Lettie is ten years old, after all, a big girl, too big for this, and Alma tries to bend to put her down, but her daughter only clamps on tighter.
The nun knocks lightly. She lowers her head. “Sister Margaret? Sister Margaret, a woman is here to see you.”
“Bring her in. Bring her in.”
The nun turns back to Alma. She holds out her hands. “I’ll take the children from here,” she says. “You have to sign a paper. That’s all there is to it. I’ll take them to their rooms.”
Willard says, “Have you got sponge cake? I heard you got it.”
The nun nods. “Yes, we do, on Tuesdays.”
Alma tries to pry Lettie loose. “I’m coming back for you. I’ll be back, real soon.”
Lettie, between sobs, mutters, “I want … to see … the mermaids. I want … to see … the mermaids.”
“I’m coming back for you,” Alma says again. “I am.” But Lettie doesn’t ease up. She pinches the skin of Alma’s arms, and Alma has to work, finger by finger, to pry her loose.
The nun’s hands are quick, her grasp firm. Unlike how she seemed in her dealings with the heavy door, she’s strong, like a winning wrestler. She worms her arms around Lettie’s middle and finally pries her away from her mother, while bracing for Lettie’s immediate arching. Alma says, “I’m coming back for you real soon. Real soon. You hear me?”
Lettie still arches. The nun turns a corner. Willard looks over his shoulder, the two sacks on his back. He smiles and nods. Alma looks down at the polished floor. She brushes at the wet stain on her dress. She feels sick like she might throw up. But she wipes her face and turns the knob and walks into the office.
Sister Margaret is tall, broad-backed, lean, solid as a fender, but pretty in a flushed kind of way. The habit doesn’t suit her. It looks too hot and itchy, too small. Her shoulders stick out stiffly, bulbous knobs, and when she walks around her desk—propelled by the balls of her feet—her hem is obviously too short, revealing her black-stockinged ankles and boxy shoes. It hadn’t ever dawned on Alma before that nuns had legs, really. They seemed to glide around on air-filled bell-shaped skirts. The nun’s ankles remind Alma of the carnival curtain pulled back to reveal the Mule-Faced Woman’s ordinary legs, and, too, of the hose at the mill. She wonders if she has righted those very stockings, pulled them over the pedestal’s flexed foot and ripped them off again—or if nuns have holy stockings made in Rome especially for them. The nun bows her head slightly and motions for her to take a seat. But Alma just looks at the chair, shakes her head no. It’s too much to ask. She won’t be needing it. She’ll just stand.
The room is absolutely quiet. Nothing stirs. Jesus suffers placidly on a cross hung on the wall, his ribs protruding, his head lolled crowned with thorns, his side knifed. The desk is tidy—blotter, papers under a smooth stone paperweight.
“You’re here to leave your children,” the nun says matter-of-factly.
Alma nods. She feels dizzy, decides to sit after all. It’s more ladylike than falling down. She takes a step toward the chair, but then lurches. The nun grabs her elbow and leads her down into the chair. Alma expects the chair to be unyielding, but its weak cane seat gives beneath her. The nun hands her a tissue. Alma takes it, realizes that she’s crying.
“Do you think you’re going to be sick?” the nun asks.
Alma shakes her head no, but then says, “Maybe.”
The nun places an empty metal wastepaper basket in front of her. It makes a hollow gong against the stone floor. Alma feels childish. She feels weak. She wonders if the nun isn’t looking at her in such a way that seems to say, You made the wrong choice, men and the body and sex and all of that, birthing these children, and now you’ve failed, and you’ve had to come to rely on me. Here I am, having made the most holy choice, and I have to clean up after your mess. Sister Margaret says, “It’s difficult, I imagine. For some more than others. I prefer the ones that it’s most difficult for.”
Alma knows that it’s supposed to be a compliment, but, in saying that she prefers Alma, the nun has admitted that she has preferences, that she is, in fact, judging. Alma went to school for only a handful of years. She remembers a snake that had accidentally slithered in, and how her teacher, long-necked and young, refused to kill it. Instead she had one of the boys trap it in a bag and set it outside to the field. She remembers the thin snake now, and the teacher, sitting at her desk, reading without moving her lips, and how she interrupted her once and the teacher looked at her in the same way she looked at the snake, not wanting to touch it, fearing its quick-tensing body, but wanting it to be saved nonetheless. Alma feels like a child, again, certainly.
“And you plan to come back for them?”
“Yes. Willard is slow, and Lettie needs care. She’s easily upset at things. Don’t expect much of Willard, and don’t scold Lettie too much.”
“I’ll make a note of it.” But she doesn’t write anything down. She rounds her desk and sits behind it. She puts a paper on the wooden desk and slides it to Alma. “It’s a simple form, stating that you’ve handed the children over into our care. You sign here.” She points with the pen tip to an X at the bottom of the page.
Alma takes the pen, looks over the page as if she’s reading it, but she isn’t. Nothing sinks in. It is a page full of black lines and circles, not even letters. It means nothing to her. She signs her name, then looks out the small window. She can see the field, the chicken coop, the dock. The sky is a dingy gray, like laundry water, squared by the window frame. She glances at Jesus and then down at her own hands, palms up and open. She wants to tell the nun about the trunk, that this trip is necessary and they will come back rich. But in this tidy office, the trunk cannot exist, not even as an idea. It waits outside the boundaries of this reality. The trunk would be worse than imagination or a fancy; it would be a lie, because Alma doesn’t really believe in the trunk, not really, especially not here. She wants to tell her that Henry believes in the trunk and that there are things that you do because you love someone, things you believe because they need you to believe them. She thinks of him at the bedroom window, just before he’s told her to come look at the bear, these words come back to her: He wears hope like a hat. Alma could say, You wouldn’t understand, because the nun hasn’t ever been married, probably has never even been in love. But that would be cruel to say, and, she’s quite sure, untrue. Alma believes that there are base emotions that play out differently in each life but are the same for all of us. Who better than a nun understands what one will do for love? She wants to tell the nun that she’s in love, and, too, that she needs more than love. She’s looking for something that may or may not be contained in a trunk, that may or may not even exist. She says, “Things are hard. I worked at the hosiery mill, a turner, and we run a boardinghouse. And we’ve got the children, and there was a bear—”
The nun raises her hand. “When will I see you again?” she inquires.
“Soon,” Alma says, but she doesn’t know. She feels broken, her mind fragmented. Her children—she wonders where they all are at this very moment. She could run from the room and start off down the halls, calling for them, her voice ringing out against the stone floors. She could coll
ect them.
But no, its done, the family splintered. Her legs are heavy. They feel boneless. She rubs her hands along the rough edge of the seat. She imagines her children’s damp socks, their throaty winter coughs, the heavy breaths of their sleep. It’s as if they’ve been attached to her by ropes but now the ropes are slack—and she’s gone slack as well. She longs for the warm, broad hand of her own father resting on her head. She can’t imagine reaching Florida. She can’t imagine finding her way home. Things will never be the same. She knows this much. The children are no longer holding hands. They no longer circle her. They are no longer a giant, open, turning mouth that can swallow her whole. They have disappeared, scattered. She can feel an itchy tear that has pearled on her chin. It quivers. She wipes it with the back of her hand. “I’ll be back soon,” she says, in a hoarse whisper. “Soon.”
4
A ticket-taker walks up to the billing. DANCING BEAR! SINGING PARROT! ACROBATICS, CHORUS GIRLS, AND COMEDICS! THE GREATEST PERFORMERS OF THE WORLD! 10 CENTS, PLEASE. It’s raining, and he can’t keep the umbrella propped over his head while trying to hammer. He lets the umbrella drop, its spidery metal legs curled up, the black cloth catching rain. The thin board and nails are slick, but he manages to dig one nail in, pounding it till it’s flush, then another and another, until all four corners are tacked down. CLOSED, the sign reads. Its tilted, as it should be, a diagonal across the poster. Its final, and although he feels for the sorry show folks with their dead bear and joyless, lead-bottomed chorus girls, it’s a good thing to put an end to something. There’s little in his life that is so certain as this: CLOSED. He wipes the rain from his face, picks up the umbrella, dumping and shaking out the pooled water, and ducks back inside.
Irving wanders the empty house, room after room. He can still smell the parrot, even the bear. He wanted to go with them, to be packed up in Nettie’s trunk, to be folded and tucked away in Mr. Eddie’s bag, as small as a doctor’s satchel. His cheeks still burn from where he let the paunchy old women pinch him. The house is cold, staunch in its emptiness. He walks to the kitchen, climbs up on the counter, where he kneels, hunting through the cupboards, but there’s nothing. No one is here. He stands up on the counter in his boots and looks down at the bare table, its four spindly chairs. Everything in the house seems shrunken from this viewpoint. He misses Willard, his puffy body and large head, all rounded like a diver’s costume. Sometimes Willard seems like he is peering out at Irving through the circular glass window in the diver’s metal mask, dim and lonesome, like Irving is the only one who can truly see him in there. He wonders if Willard and Lettie are with their grandmother or in the orphanage. He should be with them, to watch over them. He can’t stand the quiet, the hushed silence, the house holding its breath. He shouts, long and loud, stomps his feet until the cupboards jiggle on their hinges. Then he stops and it’s quiet again, quieter it seems than it was before.