“Come September, you’ll be gone.”
“I live here. My family is here. Billy . . . ”
“You won’t be coming back.”
“You don’t know that.”
“You’re going places, girl.”
“Well, I wasn’t thinking about asking you to marry me.”
“No?”
She looks down.
“So maybe you don’t know how I feel,” he says.
She looks at him, then, her whole body trembling, making it hard to think, or argue. The moment among the trees when he lifted her up rushes back at her. The apples, the bees, the russet leaves hiding them from the world. The clarity of that desire.
“I need . . . ”
“C’mon,” he moves out of reach. “I’ll drive you home.”
She stands her ground, stands in his way. He stops, tilts his head, watching her. That slow smile. She moves toward him as if she knows what she’s doing. Kisses him, shocked at her own daring. Yes or no, she thinks, as he hesitates, yes or no.
JUNE
Well before dawn, Billy lights the gas under the percolator while Nell makes sandwiches.
“Heat the milk, okay?”
“More butter,” he counters, pouring milk into a pan.
She butters bread, pulls ham from the fridge, the house quiet except for Flanagan scratching at the back door to go out.
In the dark, in the old broad-bottomed canoe, they paddle south to the Keuka Lake outlet through mist rising off the water. Billy is in front for the first time in their lives, still struggling to manage a paddle, but slowly regaining some strength and skill.
In fading starlight, they retrace the route of General Sullivan’s 1779 expedition, hiking through wetland, then white pine and walnut forest, emerging into the remnants of Seneca fields and orchards.
Billy leads the way on an ancient trail, following a stream banked with Solomon’s seal. Each spring they’d searched for the fire-blackened stumps of ancient apple trees with green shoots sprouting from them. The peach orchards, less hardy, were gone, but it was possible to imagine the long lines of their cultivation, to see, in the mind’s eye, row upon row of trees white with bloom in the spring, heavy with fruit in the summer.
As children, they had paced off the dimensions of the longhouses that would have been here, pictured the plantings of the “three sisters”: corn to shade the squash, squash to cool the roots of the corn, beans to climb the stalks. In their imaginings it was as if the Seneca had gone out among the hills one morning and would soon return. As if time could turn back on itself, brush aside the thin layer of grass and earth that separated Billy and Nell from those who had come before, and reunite them.
Billy lounges against a silver maple, nearly disappearing into his jacket. Head back, eyes half shut, his physical languor masks the intensity of his gaze. Nell sits beside him, leaning into his shoulder. She inhales the smell of loam rising from the woodland floor, the bright tang of dew.
In the near dark, the birds begin: a few individual notes, some call and response, then quartets, quintets, sextets, as the first hint of light appears.
“How much can you hear?”
“Enough.”
A long, mournful wolflike wail rises from the lake, the howl used by separated loons to reestablish contact. And then the male loon’s yodel, a repeating phrase of low and high notes.
“The Ojibwa say the loon inspired their flutes.”
“Show-off,” Nell laughs.
“And the Tsimshian tell of a loon restoring a blind man’s sight. He rewarded her with a necklace of white feathers, adorning their necks to this day.”
“Is that why you made me that necklace?”
“Maybe.”
Color begins to light the hills. Geneva, at the north end of the lake, is still on the verge of day; then Saint Joseph’s steeple catches the sun and flares like the beam of a lighthouse. The lake, as far south as they can see, shines like pewter.
The dawn chill loosens its grip as they begin their descent. They stop to watch the courting flight of a pair of eagles. The birds tumble over each other, right side up and upside down, until they take hold of each other’s talons and, wings open, spiral toward the ground; letting go in time to right themselves and soar into the sky.
“They say there are only four hundred pair left in the whole country. DDT has made their eggs thin and brittle, too fragile . . . ”
“I can’t believe we saw them,” Nell says.
“We’ll have to come back. Find their nest.”
Billy wades into the lake to push them into deep water, climbs into the front of the canoe soaked to the knees.
“You always have to get wet,” Nell teases, picking up her paddle, turning them around.
He rocks the boat violently. “You could join me.”
“Billy!”
“Come on, lazybones. Paddle.”
Nell leans into her stroke, the way he’d taught her, as two green herons take to the air from their perch near the entrance to the creek. Their cries echo over the water, a commotion of wings across the bow.
The next day Billy unveils his plan to swim a mile every morning, Nell in the rowboat beside him, a stopwatch to time his progress. He’ll borrow Asa’s truck to drive her to school when they’re done.
It creates a new pattern to their days, pulls them into tighter orbit, a circle as familiar as their names.
They stop at Delaney’s for donuts and coffee, steal another half hour, squandering time like children. Nell is late to school each day, her hands blistered from rowing, the taste of cinnamon sugar in her mouth. Sliding into her desk for AP History, too late in the year to matter, too late to care.
Nell carries the lake, the rowboat, the morning’s light and rhythm through the day with her, buoyed by something new: hope.
First thing Saturday morning Marion manages to burn the oatmeal she left to soak all night on the back of the stove. No one, as far as she knows, has ever burned the oatmeal. It’s idiotproof. In the morning, all you have to do is heat it through. The first cigarette and cup of coffee out on the porch have done nothing to dispel her mood or the smell of the scorched, ruined pan.
Her slacks are too tight and damn if that doesn’t make them uncomfortable. God, she hates the thought of shopping almost worse than she hates the thought of turning into a fat old woman. Not that she’s actually fat. Not yet.
After being too thin for most of her life, where is the justice in putting on weight now, just in time for her son’s eyes to glance away from her every time she walks into a room, or parks her big butt in a plastic chair down by the lake.
She lights another cigarette. The one thing she and Billy still seem to have in common. She likes to borrow his Luckies. She makes a mental note to buy him a carton in town. No one likes a mooch.
Now that she thinks about it, what else do they have in common? She tries to remember trips to the library, or rainy afternoons when she might have driven him around for his paper route. Not a library kind of kid and not much coddling. Weather’s weather; comes with the territory.
Maybe Billy will develop some interests as an adult they can share. Like what? Cars and booze and slutty girls are not pursuits you indulge with your mother. When is he going to take hold? He can’t keep that lousy job at the gas station forever. Why is no one asking these questions? She’s offered to pay for community college, whatever the government won’t cover, although where she’ll find the money is a mystery. He just looks at her like she’s insulting him.
She pours herself another cup of coffee in the kitchen, hesitates with the bottle of cream in her hand, looks at the pan full of burned oatmeal in the sink, thinks what the hell, and tips in cream.
Upstairs Marion walks in on Billy shaving in the bathroom. Standing at the sink in those awful Army green boxer shorts. She hasn’t seen him this undr
essed in years.
“Jesus Christ, Billy, you’re skinnier than Nell!”
She sees the wreck of his flesh from jaw to hand; the bright trickle of blood at the corner of his lip. He slams the door in her face.
She knocks.
“Go away, Mom.”
On the other side of the door, Billy leans against the sink, looking down into the floating bits of hair and shaving cream, the blood dripping from his face. He can hear the pulse inside his head, the unending buzz and ringing in his ears. His heartbeat is out of control.
He looks at the razor in his hand, the swirl of blood in the bowl. Walks out the door, leaving the grime in the sink; drops the bloody towel on the floor.
In his bedroom he pulls on jeans and a T-shirt and heads for the stairs, shouting:
“Marion! Where are you? Get in the kitchen, woman! I want food!”
Marion scrambles eggs and toasts thick slices of bread. She pulls out the homemade strawberry jam she’s been saving. Warms his plate in the oven.
Billy sits at the table, makes a show of eating—too much, too fast—talking through a mouthful of eggs. She doesn’t scold him, instead she sits across from him, steals a piece of his toast, slathers it with jam.
Billy pushes his plate away. The eggs and toast dissolve into dust in his mouth. He lights a cigarette, tips his chair back on two legs. Raises an eyebrow at her, waiting for the lecture—no smoking at the table, stop ruining my chairs—that doesn’t come. Uses his plate as an ashtray, a further provocation.
He sips his coffee, waits.
“You’ve developed some nice manners,” she says.
Silence.
“What am I going to do with you?” she asks.
“Kick me out on my ass.”
“That’s not what families are for.”
When he does not reply, Marion asks: “Who’s the girl?”
“None of your business.”
“Be careful. Nell looks up to you.”
“Don’t you think she knows all about . . . ”
“Don’t wave it in our faces, that’s all I’m saying.”
How does she shame him so easily? Reproach turns rancid as his stomach clenches in protest at eggs and coffee and cigarettes.
He looks at his mother, her hair graying, her stomach going soft. The smile lines around her eyes he’d loved so as a child, etched more deeply now. The skin on her capable hands looks fragile as she reaches for her coffee cup.
It would be so easy to touch that soft hand. It’s what she wants; it’s not much, their old camaraderie full of jokes and shared stolen cigarettes, hidden from Jack, their shoulders touching as they dissolved in laughter, usually at someone else’s expense. The yielding softness of her skin, the imploring softness of her need to be loved, the sharp sting of her tongue.
So easy to fall back into that if his mother’s body didn’t repulse him now. All bodies. His own body. Flesh and decay, the death inside every living thing.
Marion sees the disgust pass across his face, so potent it makes her flinch.
Give him time, Jack says to her, over and over. He’ll come back to us.
Will he? she wonders.
Just like Jack, the hollow-eyed stare, the essential absence. Even when he was present, he was somewhere else. Even in bed, the need they both expressed, like a second honeymoon in its intensity, but lonely. How could you make love and feel so alone, sweat and strain after pleasure, new life, hoping for release, a moment of oblivion, how could this coupling, limb to limb, heart to heart, feel so full of air and emptiness? Like making love to a ghost, an illusion, the body but not the man himself.
She doesn’t like to think about how they survived those years, how Jack somehow stitched himself back together, rebuilt the shell he had become. Don’t talk to me about courage, Marion thinks, not until you’ve lived through that.
They had each other, they had three children and soon two more to pull them along, create enough velocity to pull Jack into their orbit.
What does Billy have to hold on to?
She sees him waver, soften, then harden against her again. Before she can stop herself she says:
“You could take a break from being such a selfish little shit.”
Billy stands up too fast; his chair scrapes back and falls over behind him. He can’t hear it hit the floor but feels the vibration of its impact in his feet and knees. There is a roaring inside his head. He holds one hand inside the other, the words can’t you see? screaming to get out. He sees his scars split open, his bloody hands fusing to Frank Buckles’s flak jacket.
He can’t pull him free. His head lolls on his neck, blood soaks the collar of his jacket; blood, tissue, bits of bone. He smells flesh burning.
Another blast blows him clear of the wreck. Flames burst into the sky.
Can he get to Frank, can he . . . ?
He has kids, Frank has kids.
Can’t you see? Can’t you see?
Marion’s mouth is open but he can’t hear her.
She is shouting his name.
“Billy!”
He slams out the back door. He wants to beat his hands against the side of the house, the sharp corners of the porch railing.
“Billy!!”
He holds his hands in front of him to keep her away. She keeps coming toward him, puts her arms around him; tries to cover the flame of his rage. Holds him: It’s okay . . . It’s okay.
Her touch scalds him.
He wishes it would rain.
He wishes it would snow.
Two days later Billy wakes from a dreamless pit of sleep. Where is he? The curtains blowing into the room tell him it’s not his hooch. Home, he realizes, as he watches clouds scudding over the moon. Flanagan stirs, stretches; settles again at the foot of the bed.
He sees grazes and bruises on his hands and arms as he drags on pants and a T-shirt. Who brought him home last night? Regulars at O’Donovan’s have grown wary of him; the limited kindness they had for a returning vet has been spent. Who was he fighting with? He can’t remember.
Drinking with a vengeance. Another broken promise.
He’d started the night at Saint Joe’s, intending to invite Father O’Rourke to come fishing. But the church was locked up tight. When he knocked on the rectory door Margaret told him the priest was in Rochester. He was being called on the carpet for his antiwar work again.
“He’s been ordered to keep silent. And threatened with a transfer.” Margaret was nearly in tears. “He’s an old man, Billy. This is his home. And he won’t stop. I know him. He won’t stop.”
Billy is unexpectedly gutted by this news and wonders at the old priest’s nerve and resilience.
Now he remembers. His appointment with the new hand specialist in Syracuse. There’s nothing more they can do. Full stop.
He will never fly again.
Must have been his father who got into his truck at 2 A.M. to come get him. Soft-spoken Jack, who never reprimands his son, who seems shattered in some terrible way Billy can’t begin to understand, and sure as hell doesn’t want to be responsible for, whose reactions to his screaming nightmares are so intense, Billy wonders if his father is having his own flashbacks.
His throat feels chapped; he’s so thirsty. He heads downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of water. Turning the tap in the bluestone sink, he thinks of Brendan, the two of them stuck washing and drying the dinner dishes, the Fiestaware and the iron kettles, singing some dumb camp song, Nell thumping out the tunes at the old upright in the living room, his father at the kitchen table with a beer, singing along, his mother in the living room or out on the porch with a cigarette and a book. Every moment she could grab for herself there was a book in her hand, her best escape from the noise and chaos of five kids.
He should call Brendan. He should call Rosie. And Sheila. He mis
ses Sheila. Spend some time. He should do a lot of things.
He walks onto the back porch to take a piss, swiveling at the last minute to avoid the Plymouth. Four sets of eyes blink at him from the overturned trash barrels: the fucking raccoons. The rocks he’d piled on the lids had done nothing to deter them.
Does he want another drink? There’s no whiskey in the house; he knows that, his mother cleared it out. Not even a pint of scotch or gin for their usual late afternoon cocktail. As if their abstinence could slow him down. Now it’s lemonade and iced tea while the coleslaw chills and they start a fire in the grill for the burgers or chops. There’d be a roast chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy for Sunday lunch. Still the big midday meal even without the usual visit to church.
Does he still believe? He remembers learning the catechism for his first communion, his father patiently coaching him. Who made the world? Who is God? Why did God make you? What must we do to save our souls?
What did he know of the communion of souls at thirteen? And his mother, trying to stick it out in the church of her childhood, trying to hold on, or let herself be held onto, because of Jack and his stubborn faith or his stubborn certitude that going through the motions, regardless of how you felt about it personally, was what you had to do for your children.
He can see his father kneeling in the pew, long after the rest of them sit down, kneeling through all of communion. His father’s prayers are not soft things. His back tenses, his shoulders hunch, the cords in his neck stand out. There is an edge to his prayers, a simmer of anger and impatience: Why are you testing me?
His parents don’t even keep the form much anymore, only attending church together on the holidays, though Jack still goes to Mass every week. What’s it like for Nell, the way so much seems to be disappearing from their lives? All the siblings gone now, the last high school graduation, the last high school dance, church an afterthought.
We needed an entire pew. Rosie and Sheila in their dresses and pigtails, then he and Brendan, so alike even though they were four years apart and Nell, the baby, passed along from Mom to Rosie who was so much better at keeping her quiet. The boys in short pants, hand-me-down white shirts, narrow black ties. Their faces scrubbed by Sheila, shoes polished the night before on newspapers laid out on the kitchen floor.