"Stop worrying so much about how pretty it is she suddenly said. and I spun around. '`It's just a little boy's imaginary fortress in the woods. Noble. Get it done." she said. and I saw that it had become more important to her than it had ever been to my brother.
I went back to work, and a little while later. I caught a splinter in my palm. It hurt. so I threw down the hammer and went to the house. Mommy was sitting in the living room in her great-grandpa Jordan's rocking chair, staring out the window and moving back and forth very gently. She heard me come in, but kept looking out the window,
"What is it. Noble?" she asked.
"I got a splinter," I said.
"So? You've gotten splinters before, and you kept working because you were afraid I'd tell you to stop building your fort. remember? Remember how I saw them only when I got into your bath and I lectured you about infections? Remember?"
I started to shake my head, but she turned to me sharply. and I stopped.
"Yes."
"Go back to your fort. I'll call you when its time to have dinner" she said.
It was on the tip of my tongue to ask if she wanted me to help, to set the table at least, but she anticipated it.
"Without Celeste now. I will do everything in the kitchen. and I will set the table. You were never good at it. Noble. You broke one of my pieces of china, an heirloom, remember? You were always a bit clumsy. Noble, but boys are more clumsy. Don't worry about it. It's expected," she added and turned back to the window.
"There's a lull out there." she said. It seemed like she was talking to herself more than she was talking to me now. "So much has happened. Everyone has retreated for a while. But don't worry. They will return. Everything will be fine again soon when they see we're doing exactly what we were told to do. Don't worry." she whispered.
I thought about it. Was that why I didn't feel or see any spirits?
I looked at my splinter, and then I went back to the fort and continued, not really doing all that much before she called me to dinner. Only then did she help me get the splinter out of my hand. I didn't cry about it, but she talked to me as if I were crying.
"Boys are such babies. Actually, they never stop being babies. Even when they're men, grown, they need to be treated with tender loving care much more than women do. You hate to hear it. I know, but women are actually stronger than men, especially when it comes to endurance. Noble. Women endure.
They are the ones who give birth, you know. Men stand by and grimace, giving thanks they are not having the labor pains. This splinter is nothing. Most women would gladly endure a splinter rather than give birth, believe me. There," she said. "See? Its all over. Wipe away your tears and wash your hands. It's time for dinner," she told me, even though I had no tears. I pretended I did and went to wash my hands.
Dinner was the most lonely time of all for me. I never stopped expecting my brother to appear and take his seat. I missed the way he squirmed or complained about having too many vegetables.
"You're eating too fast as usual," Mommy told me. I had barely started, but it was something she always said to Noble. "Take your time and chew every mouthful. Your poor stomach will complain if you don't," she warned.
How many times I had heard her say that to him? I actually looked at his chair, and then Mommy, not realizing it until that very moment, practically leaped out of hers.
"Noble!" she cried. I held my breath, "What?"
"You're sitting in your sister's chair. It's not right to do that. Get back m' to your own seat immediately. Go on," she ordered.
I looked at my plate and Noble's chair and rose slowly. It was very hard to do it, to sit in his seat. I hesitated. Mommy leaned toward me, her hands on the table.
"You have to do this," she said in a whisper. "You have to do it all."
I sat, and she put my plate of food in front of me. "Gobble your food." she said. "Go on."
I started to eat fast, and then she stopped me.
"Please, eat slowly. I told you. Someday you'll have to eat with more people, and you want to be polite, don't you. Noble? You don't want people to think you were brought up in a pigsty." She smiled. "Remember when Daddy used to tell you how his mother chastised him at the dinner table? If he didn't eat slowly, he would have to eat a second dinner. That's what he said. Of course. I didn't believe that. Not for a moment. Half an ear. remember? That was what he told you children. Half an ear," she muttered.
She sat again and sighed.
"Once there was so much joy around this table. I wonder if there will ever be as much again."
She ate in small bites, pecking at her food like a sick bird. When we were finished. I started to reach for a plate, and she cried out.
"Don't touch anything. Go play with your trains or look for night crawlers," she told me. "You want to go fishing again, don't you?"
The very thought of it put an electric fear into my bones. I started to shake my head.
"Of course you do. You must. It's part of what I need you to do. You'll understand later." she promised. "Go on. You're excused from the table. Noble,- she concluded, waving her hand at me.
I rose and walked out. Noble would take his flashlight and search around the house for worms. He'd pluck them and drop them in his empty coffee can. He would tease me and call them pieces of spaghetti, which made it hard for me to eat real spaghetti when Mommy served it. I stood there for the longest time, and then I put my hands in my pants pockets and brought my right hand out quickly. What was that?
Gingerly. I put my hand back in and brought it out. It was the dried remains of a dead snail. My stomach churned. but I caught hold of myself when I turned and saw Mommy peering out of the living room front window curtain, watching me. I quickly went to find the coffee can and, swallowing back my reluctance, began to pluck night crawlers with as much glee as I could manage.
Mommy was smiling.
For her, every day that passed with me doing the things that Noble had done was another day confirming that Noble was indeed coming back. Mommy felt it when she saw the dirt on my face, the sores on my hands, the tears in my jeans, and the mud on my shoes. My completion of the fort in the woods was a crowning achievement. She talked about it as if I had built one of Daddy's wonderful houses.
You do take after your father." she said. "You've inherited his penchant for construction. The next house you build will be even better. I always knew you'd be goad with your hands. You're mechanically inclined. You draw well. You have that vision," she continued.
How would I ever draw as well as my brother had, or at least good enough to please her? I wondered. When I tried to draw some of the things he had, they came out terrible. but Mommy didn't see it that way. She raved about my sketches just the way she always did when my brother made them. Was she blind to my awkward lines, or did she really see something good in them?
She was right about the calluses coming, just the way they had come to Noble's hands. The roughness was distasteful to me at first, and then I did get used to it. I swung my hammer better, drove nails in faster, and worked with a saw without the fear I used to have of cutting myself. Mommy had me chopping wood and showed me how to split logs to prepare them for the coming winter, when we would use them in our fire-place. It was very hard work. Most nights. I ached terribly and wanted nothing more than to soak in a hot tub, but she told me to just shower quickly and get to bed.
"You don't soften yourself. You toughen yourself," she said. "There will be harder things for you to do in the coming days and weeks, months, and years, and you'll thank me for helping you get stronger and stronger."
Sometimes I would lie in bed and think about my beautifully scented soaps, especially the gift packages of them Daddy had bought me. I would go into Mommy's room and stare at everything on her vanity table like some beggar staring through a bakery window at the fresh loaves. I longed to lift a brush and run it through my hair the way I used to. but Mommy kept my hair very short. There was actually nothing to brush anyway.
&n
bsp; One night she caught me in there, smelling the scent of her cologne, and she screamed from the doorway,
"What are you doing? Don't touch my things!" she snapped and marched in to rip the bottle from my hands.
"I'm sorry. Mommy. I just wanted--"
"Tomorrow. I'll go into town and buy you some of the men's cologue your father used to use. You like that smell. don't you?"
"Yes
"Good." She squeezed my upper arm. "Good," she said. "You're firmer. Good."
She made me leave the room and go work on my school problems. Ironically, if I did them as quickly as I used to do them, she was upset. She tried hard to find things wrong and picked on the smallest mistakes, demanding me to write things over or redo math problems, even if I got them all right.
"You didn't do them correctly. It was just luck," she said.
"Do it again."
I began to realize that I was better off working slower, making deliberate mistakes, and not writing as neatly as I could. It pleased her,
"You'll get it eventually," she would say as she had always said to Noble. "Just keep at it."
If I completed a reading assignment. I couldn't reveal it. When she looked in on me. I had to flip the pages back and pretend I was only up to the middle. She would smile and encourage me to concentrate.
"It's usually more difficult for boys than it is for girls until after puberty," she explained. For some reason, boys do better then, and more often than not, girls don't do as well."
She paused and nodded at me, her eyes getting that far-off look she often had when she was sitting in the rocker or on the chintz sofa and looking out the window.
"It's good," she said. "You're doing well. I'm sure they will be pleased with both of us. I'm sure they will return to us, and well be safe again, safer than any of those skeptics and busybodies out there."
Except for the postman, who had seen me chopping wood and watched me for a few moments, and the fuel oil delivery man, no one from what Mommy now called the outside world saw me. In time they would have to. I thought. I would have to go take the test for my progress at home school, at least, not to mention accompanying Mommy when she went shopping, even when she went far away. It made me nervous to think about it. Would they see Noble or Celeste when they looked at me, and how would that affect Mommy? More important, how would it affect our spiritual family?
It wasn't until the grass had thickened over the newly dug grave to the extent that a stranger could not look at it and tell any difference that Mommy finally decided to call me into the living room one night to tell me her plan for dealing with the "nosy, ignorant community."
"I want you to go fishing tomorrow, Noble," she began, "I want you to go with Celeste."
I looked at her, my face heavy with confusion. She smiled.
The two of you scrunch your eyebrows the same way. I told Celeste many times she would develop two deep wrinkles and regret it someday."
She sighed.
"Someday. What a word that is," she rambled, "so full of so much hope, so much promise. It trails off ahead of us, floats around us, brightens our darkest moments. We can always turn to it to pull ourselves out of our quicksand of doldrums. Someday this, someday that. Well, it works almost always. We can't really do that now, can we? It's far, far too late for that." she said, thought a moment, and then cleared her throat and sat firmer.
What did she mean by "go with Celeste"?
"You will go with your sister. You will get separated. And you will come running home to me when you can't find her late in the day. Take her pole. Where is yours?" she asked, and my eyes widened. "Well?"
"It was in the creek, Mommy," I said. I almost said. "Remember?"
She thought a moment and then nodded to herself. "That's fine. I suppose. They'll find it."
"Who?"
"The search party." she said. "The police will be here, and they will question you and me in great detail, so well talk about it now. I've been thinking about it for a long time, as you can imagine, and I know exactly what you will say.
"Oh, don't you see, my darling boy, how important this all is? Stop dancing like that. I've told you many, many times about these people around us, how they talk about us, think about us. They would never understand us, never believe anything but their own stupid, nasty thoughts.
"We have to do this now. Soon there would be questions. otherwise. I have reports to turn in, and there is always the possibility of a visit from the school, you know. That interfering know-it-all, Dr. Cornfield, would just love to pounce on me, especially now that Taylor is gone and no longer any threat to him.
"But all of that is not important. We have a life to live here, and we don't want people snooping about forever, now do we, my precious?" she asked, running her hand over my hair and down my cheek. I closed my eyes to keep the pleasant loving touch forever and ever locked in my heart. I had longed so for that so many, many times and watched with envy as she caressed Noble and not me.
"Do we?" she repeated.
"No."
"Good. Right. Okay. You and Celeste will go off in the morning to fish. You will decide to separate. You go upstream. She'll go downstream, below that horrible boulder. Midday, you will come running home to tell me you can't find her. She didn't meet you where she was supposed to meet you. Well go look for her. We'll find the fishing rod, and thenwell call the police," she continued.
It sounded like a story I would read in one of the books in our library.
"Why did you split up with your sister?" she asked, pretending to be a policeman.
"What?"
"Why didn't you fish together?"
"She talks too much." I said, and she smiled. "Yes, that's right. That's true. Very good"
I loved when Mommy appreciated me. I went on.
"And she doesn't like to fish all that much. I thought she was just going to go off and find a place and read one of her books, like she has done many times before. and I didn't care. I wanted to fish."
"Excellent. And when she didn't show up, what did you do?"
"I ran about, shouting for her. until I thought she might have gone home without me."
"That's very clever. Noble. Very clever." she said, smiling, with appreciation lighting her eves. I felt good basking in that glow.
"But when I got home..."
"She wasn't here. Exactly. So we both went looking, and--" she encouraged, gesturing for something more.
"We found the rod but not her. Where is she?"
"Where is she?" she mimicked. "Celeste... my Celeste... I hate to think of the horrible possibilities.... Someone... did you see someone?"
"No. but I thought I heard someone once. I even thought I heard a scream. but I couldn't tell. The stream is so noisy these days."
"Yes, it is."
She smiled again and leaned over to kiss my cheek. "And," she said. "we found her shoe, didn't we?"
"Her shoe?"
"Exactly. One shoe, just one shoe." She sat back, a look of contentment on her face, and nodded. "They will never bother us after this," she said. "Never."
That night when I went to sleep, I dreamed the story just as Mommy and I had told it. I saw myself walking into the woods with... with Celeste. It was so strange at first to turn and see her traipsing behind me, her head down, hearing her mumble complaints about the bushes, the effort to get through the forest, the dirty job of putting a worm on a hook.
"You're going to do it for me. Noble." she said. "Or I won't go along. And don't tell me it doesn't hurt them. They bleed, don't they?"
"You're so stupid. Celeste." I told her.
"I am not!" she whined, and I smiled, It was fun to tease her. It had always been fun.
"Why don't you just ask your spirits to put the worm on the hook for you?" I threw back at her. He had said that. I remembered it well,
"I told you. They don't do things like that. and Mommy's told you, too. Someday when you see them, you'll understand."
Someday... someday...
someday... Promises drifting like white ribbons through the darkness of my sleep, leading me into the light of morning.
Mommy was jubilant in the morning. She was singing one of her happier old songs. She had prepared Noble's favorite breakfast blueberry pancakes with maple syrup and little sausages. The aroma was tantalizing, which surprised me. I was never that fond of the sausages. Sometimes they upset my stomach, but this morning. I had a big appetite.
"Now, I'm holding you to your prediction today. Noble, she told me as she put out the breakfast arid poured my orange juice. "You're bringing home our dinner. And I don't want to hear about any arguments between you and your sister. You two behave. I have fixed you peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and there's chocolate milk in the thermos. Share it evenly. I don't want to hear. He drank it all and didn't give me any. I'm warning you," she said, wagging her finger at me.
I ate as much as I could, surprised at how much I did eat, and then I rose, took the lunch pail, and walked to the front door. The fishing rod, which was really Celeste's, was in the foyer with the can of fresh worms. Mommy kissed me in the doorway and told us to be careful.
"I love you both!" she cried as I walked toward the woods.
My heart was thumping hard and fast. I hadn't been back to the creek since that day, of course. I feared the sight of it, the sound of it. As I stepped through the bushes and pushed aside any branches that grew over the pathway we always followed. I heard Mommy telling the story again, how she had prepared a wonderful breakfast for us, how we had gone out together, excited, full of energy, Celeste looking particularly bright and beautiful, her hair gleaming in the sunlight.
Ill never forget the way it danced around her face, that sunlight, my precious little Mommy said with tearful eyes. I cried myself,
As I listened to her speak in my mind. I could hear a second set of footsteps just behind me. I paused.