?Like what??
?A kind of gambler, I guess. It?s a real risk to move around well-rooted trees, and he knew that-he?s smarter than me when it comes to agriculture. But the way it was here, well, it just wasn?t the way he saw it in his mind. And he had to make all the pieces fit together.?
Hadley sits down on a cluster of rocks on the edge of the lake and points to the tree overhead. ?You hear that cardinal??
There is a noise like a squeaky toy-high and low and high and low and high and low. Then out of the branches flies a bright red bird. The things this guy knows, I think.
?It?s really nice of Sam to let us stay here,? I say, making conversation.
?No insult to you and your mom, but he?s doing it for Joley. Sam isn?t really big on visitors, especially women from California. He?s been griping about it all week, actually.? He stops and looks at me. ?I guess I shouldn?t be telling you this.?
?Well, that?s all right. He seems to have it out for my mother. She fell into a pile of manure before and he didn?t do anything to help her.?
Hadley laughs. ?Not much you can do if someone falls in a pile of shit,? he says. ?Didn?t your mom grow up around here??
?Newton. Is it close by??
Hadley whistles through his teeth. ?Close in miles but a world away. Sam?s got this chip on his shoulder about the suburbs in Boston. They?re the ones with all the power who always vote down local aid to farms, but they haven?t got any idea what kind of work we do here. Newton girls, when we were in school, were the ones who used to giggle when we walked by, you know, come on to us but not let us near them. Like we were always dirty, because we worked with our hands instead of pushing a pencil. Some of them were really hot, too. Drove Sam nuts.?
Hadley turns to face me. He is smiling and about to say something but when he looks at me his smile falls away and he is just left staring. ?You have really pretty eyes.?
?Oh, they?re a mutation,? I say. ?In biology we had to go around class and tell our genetic combinations-you know, big B, little b, et cetera. So all the blue-eyed kids said little b, little b, and all the browneyed kids said big B, little b, or big B, big B, and when the teacher came to me I said ?I have green eyes,? and the teacher said that green eyes are a mutation of blue. Like a radioactive monster.?
?Well, they?re a really nice mutation, then.? Hadley grins at me and I think I have never seen anyone with such an open smile. It?s like he?s saying, Come with me, come along, we have all the time in the world.
We walk for a little while along the edge of the lake (Hadley says it?s stocked with freshwater bass, thanks to him and Sam when they were kids), and then we cut up the north side of the orchard. Finally, far away from the house, I begin to see apple trees that really have apples hanging on them. Hadley tells me these are the Puritans and Quintes-a little tart for eating but great for cooking. As we come closer, I see Sam and Uncle Joley and my mother.
?Where have you guys been?? Uncle Joley says. ?We were getting-ready to have lunch.?
Hadley pushes me gently between the shoulder blades so that I take a step forward. ?We?ve been down by the lake. Rebecca was telling me all the stupid things you did at family Christmas parties,? Hadley says, and everyone laughs.
?Sam,? my mother says, ?Joley says you have one hundred acres??
Sam nods, but you can tell from the look on his face he doesn?t want to talk about it. I wonder if it is the subject, or my mother. ?You know anything about apples?? he says, and my mother shakes her head. ?Then it wouldn?t really interest you.?
?Sure it would. What varieties do you grow here??
Sam ignores her, so Joley and Hadley take turns reeling off the names of the different apples growing at the orchard.
?And what are these?? My mother reaches out to the tree we are passing and picks one of these early apples-a Puritan, Hadley had said. It all happens very fast, the way she holds it to the sun to observe and then lowers it to her teeth, ready to bite into it. Suddenly Sam, who is walking behind her, throws his arm over her shoulder and knocks the apple out of her hand. It rolls on the clipped grass and settles under a different tree.
?What in God?s name is your problem ?? my mother hisses.
Sam?s eyes darken until they are the color of a thunderstorm. ?They were sprayed today,? he says finally. ?You eat it, you die.? He pushed past her and walks ahead of us toward the Big House. As he passes the fallen apple he steps on it with his work boot. My mother holds her throat. For several seconds we stare at the pulp of this apple, ruined.
27 OLIVER
I have never been to Salt Lake City, which worries me. What if this impromptu trip was motivated by my own subconscious desires, rather than tapping into the quality of Jane? What if Jane and Rebecca are well into, or through, Colorado by now? If I miss them in Colorado, I will catch up with them in Kentucky. Or Indiana, wherever. As long as I reach them before they get to Massachusetts; as long as I have a chance to offer my side of the story before Joley begins brainwashing Jane again.
Joley Lipton, the bane of my existence. We have never really understood each other. Even after I had won over Jane?s parents- a twenty-year-old dating their teenaged baby-I never got her brother?s approval. Not then, not years later. He almost refused to attend the wedding, until he saw his stubbornness was literally wasting Jane away. So he did come, but sat in a corner throughout the ceremony and the reception. He belched loudly (I assume it was he) when we were pronounced man and wife. He did not offer me congratulations; he never has. He spread a rumor that the salmon mousse was rancid. And he left early.
In my opinion he is terribly in love with his sister, beyond the usual parameters of a brother-sister relationship. He has always been a drifter, and Jane has always been fiercely loyal to him. I don?t find him deserving of such support; I have heard about their childhood and it seems he was the one to get off the proverbial hook. Yet, there is something about him. Perhaps he annoys me because of this: I cannot pin down my emotions about him. He instigates. He fills Jane?s head with ridiculous notions about the institution of marriage-he, whom I have never seen with a woman. He calls at the wrong times and shows up unexpected. If Jane gets to Joley before I reach her, she may never come back. She will have been conditioned otherwise. She will most certainly not listen to me.
This blinding whiteness hits me quickly, a desert of salt. Suddenly I am in its midst, driving, a blot against this expanse. I know better; it is not colorless. White is all the colors in the rainbow, reflected at once.
I pull the car into the shoulder of the road, where several other tourists have stopped to take photographs. The terrain is flat and sweeping. If not for the record heat, I could easily be convinced I am seeing snow. A woman taps me on the shoulder. ?Sir, would you mind?? She waves a camera in my face and motions where I have to push the button. Then she runs to the guardrail where her traveling companion-an elderly man in green overalls-is already sitting. ?One, two, three, ? I say, and the flash cube goes off. The man has no teeth, I see this when he smiles.
I have always wanted to see the Great Salt Lake because of its incongruity. The idea of it: saltwater in a landlocked state, an ocean away from the ocean. I have heard that it is so large it may as well be an ocean (a small one, anyway). I look at my watch- 5:20. There is not much I will do today, anyway. I can go to the lake, take a look around and check into a motel for the night. If I must travel across America, I might as well enjoy myself.
I try to avoid the route through the city, since there might be a rush hour; if Mormons have rush hours. Instead I skirt the perimeter, bordered on both sides of the road by white earth. From time to time a breeze or a passing truck blows salt onto the asphalt, which swirls in front of the car like a wailing ghost. There are no signs for the lake and I do not want to waste the time to ask at a service station, so I follow the other cars on the road in front of me. Surely one of them, maybe more than one, will be going to the Great Salt Lake. I pass cars earnestly, searching the windows for ch
ildren or watermelon floats or shining inner tubes, the telltale symbols.
The seventh car has someone in a bathing suit. From my point of view, the passenger is young, female, and wearing a red suit criss-crossed in the back, much like Rebecca?s GUARD suit. It is a station wagon just like Jane?s-same color, same dent in the fender. I try to pull alongside the car because my blood begins to beat in my ears. Who is the driver? I cannot tell, but as I advance I see that the girl has long blond hair, wrapped into a knot of some kind at the back of her neck. Rebecca. I accelerate, my foot pushing hard against the floor of the car, weaving around a slower car in front of me. I pass them, and then swerve into their lane, relying on the rearview mirror. When I lift my eyes, I expect to see Jane, her fingers drumming on the steering wheel, her sunglasses slanted and reflective. Instead I see a burly man with a black beard and a tattoo on his chest that reads COME TO MAMA. The girl is not Rebecca at all, and the driver honks at me for cutting him off.
They are, however, going to the Great Salt Lake, and I follow them until I can see the lake from the car. Then I drive another halfmile down its edge, so that I will not have to face them in person. I park the car in a no-parking zone and walk to the edge of the water.
As far as the eye can see there is water. Deep and calm, marbleblue, with the tiny waves one finds on the Great Lakes. Well, it could be the ocean. I sit on the shore and pull off my shoes and socks. Leaning back on my elbows, I try to imagine a whale surfacing in the center of this lake, black and white, like a picture show. Then I listen to the wind and imagine instead it is that tearing sound whales make as they break through the water?s surface, and then the hollow moan through the blowhole, clearing. The sun, on its way down, beats a steady rhythm. What a day, I think. What a day.
I have second thoughts about it but I roll up my pants and take off my shirt, leaving it with my shoes and socks on the banks of the lake. Then I wade in, letting the water mat my underwear against my thighs. I dive underneath and swim as hard as I can to the spot where I pictured that whale.
Amazing, the salt content of this lake. It tastes like the ocean, feels like the ocean, buoys like the ocean. In some places it probably reaches great depths. Children play along its edges, but there is hardly anyone where I stop and tread water. I shake my hair from my eyes and survey the shore. People are starting to leave; it?s dinnertime. I should go too, and rent a room somewhere, so that I can get an early start tomorrow. To wherever it is that I am supposed to be going.
I float face down in the water and then jackknife at the waist, plunging headfirst towards the bottom of the lake. I would love to see what is there: fire coral or anemone or even white-bellied sharks and continental ridges. I kick my feet vigorously until the pressure of the depth threatens to break my eardrums. At this point all I can see is a milky black. I pivot and begin to swim to the surface, breaking with the force of a whale and embracing the air with a skeletal gasp.
A biplane comes remarkably close to the surface of the water and then circles towards the sun. It is the same sun, I realize with relief, that Jane and Rebecca are watching, wherever they may be. For a moment the plane hovers in silhouette like an artificial eagle. Well, I think, at least I don?t have to worry about them leaving the country. Jane couldn?t get Rebecca on a plane come hell or high water.
For a while after the crash we took Rebecca to a local military airport that ran programs for people who were afraid to fly. Behavior modification, really: the patrons would become proficient at a small task and then work their way up to actually flying. The first step was to come to the airport, just to look at it. Then you gave your ticket into the reservations desk the next week. Then came sitting in the terminal, and then walking outside to look at the plane. After that achievements came very gradually: getting onto the stairs of the plane (two weeks? time), walking onto the plane (two weeks? time), sitting for an hour on the immobile plane (four weeks). Eventually the plane took off for a fifteen-minute flight around the Bay area.
We took Rebecca although she was very young because the psychiatrist who had treated her recommended the program. She told us that events such as these are the most scarring to children, even though we may not be able to see it. The perfectly adjusted child might one day snap because of an unarticulated fear of flying. So Rebecca (the youngest by far) went to phobia classes. She was everyone?s darling, the other women would fight to hold her and make sure she was all right and that she understood the instructions. Rebecca herself did not mind the attention. After she left the hospital in Des Moines, she did not mention the accident and she did not give any indications of having been involved in such a catastrophe, and because of this we also shied away from the subject. We told her these classes were just a fun thing, like other little girls took ballet or piano lessons. Jane was the one who actually drove her there; I was usually away on business.
I was away on business the time Rebecca temporarily lost control-during the second week of the plane-sitting excursion. The first week, Jane told me over a crackling Chilean phone connection, Rebecca had been fine. And then all of a sudden this Saturday she was uncontrollable, throwing herself across the seats and screaming and crying. The psychiatrist told us we should continue to bring her to the phobia class, in spite of her outburst. She said that the outburst was a manifestation of fear, and as a scientist I was inclined to agree. But Jane refused to take her, and since I was in South America, I hadn?t any leverage. Rebecca was four then, and she has yet to set foot on a plane since.
Of course. They will go to Iowa.
I float, staring up at the sun. How stupid of me. I should have realized-this earlier. I was so busy concentrating on Jane that I neglected to see that Rebecca herself is one of Jane?s biggest clues. Where Rebecca goes Jane will follow. And at her age, Rebecca will want to see the site of the crash; to jog her memory, maybe, or to put it all behind her. Wherever else they choose to go en route to Massachusetts is incidental. Iowa will be the midpoint; Iowa is the sure thing.
Suddenly I am overwhelmed with relief. I will meet them in What Cheer, Iowa; I will stake out the cornfield where the wreckage still sits, until I see them, and then we shall talk. I am one step ahead. I start to smile, and then grin wider, and before I can stop myself I am laughing aloud.
28 JOLEY
Dear Jane-
Are you enjoying Fishtrap? It?s a great little place to get away from it all, particularly civilization. Montana is quite beautiful, and overlooked. Take your time getting across it. What matters isn?t when you get here, but how you get here.
I have been doing a lot of thinking about your visit, and you, and me. In particular I have been remembering the night before your wedding to Oliver, when we were on the back porch in Newton. You were wearing the yellow dress you always thought made you look fat in the hips, and you had your hair pulled back in a ponytail. You had matching yellow shoes-I?ve never forgotten that, because it gave you this look of absolute completion. You came out on the porch, holding a bottle of Coke, and you offered it to me without even looking me in the eye. But we hadn?t been doing a lot of speaking those days, not since I told you I wasn?t going to come to the wedding.
It had nothing to do with you, I suppose you understand that by now. But I was sixteen and nobody was listening to me, including you. I had these feelings about Oliver, I can?t be any more specific than that. Feelings that made me wake in the middle of the night, sweating, ripping the sheets on the bed. And dreams, which I have not told you or anyone.
This is what you said: You?re just a kid, Joley. You don?t know what it?s like to be in love. When it?s right, you know it. Why, look at how long I?ve been dating Oliver. If it wasn?t meant to be, it would have ended a long time ago.
You told me this months before the wedding, while you were cooking dinner-it was a fricassee, I remember because the oil kept spattering you in the face while you were speaking. You told me this after I begged you to give Oliver back his engagement ring. And I was a k
id, and maybe I didn?t know anything about love, but I would hazard a guess that you knew just as little as I did. The difference being you thought you knew. Anyway, when you set the date, I announced that I wasn?t coming to the wedding, it being against my principles.
Then you stopped eating entirely. I thought at first it was prewedding jitters but when you couldn?t fit into any of your clothes, or Mama?s, and when we had to belt your tightest pair of jeans just to hold them up, I knew that the cause had nothing to do with your marriage. Oh, Jane, I wanted to tell you that I didn?t mean it, that I?d go back on my word, but I was afraid you might take it as a blessing for your marriage, and I wasn?t about to give that.
And that night, before the wedding, you came onto the porch. I was looking at the lawn, or what was left of it after all the striped pink tents had been set up. There were white ribbons and crêpe de chine festooned all over the yard. It looked like a circus was coming, not a bride, and I won?t make any jokes about that. You gave me a Coke. ?Joley,? you said, ?you?re going to have to get used to him.?
And I turned to you, trying not to catch your eye. ?I don?t have to get used to anything,? I said. You had always trusted me before, and I didn?t know why you wouldn?t trust me now. Even to this day I cannot put into words what it was about Oliver that set me off. Maybe it was the combination: Oliver and you.
You began to reel off a list of all the things about Oliver that were kind and gentle and important. You told me that best of all, Oliver would get you out of this house. I nodded, and wondered to myself, at what price?
That?s when the hawks came. They circled above us, rare in Massachusetts even then. Their talons stretched behind them, orange spears, and their beaks broke the blue of the sky. They alternated between beating the air and coasting, a foreign cursive alphabet.
?Oh, Joley,? you said, squeezing my hand, ?what do you think of that??
I thought it was an omen, and I decided that I would let whatever those hawks did determine my actions for the wedding. I have always prided myself on reading signs: the tickle in Mama?s voice that betrayed her composure; the showers you took at midnight and that nightgown you tore to shreds; Oliver; those hawks. We both watched as the birds flew together, connecting like acrobats. Four wings beat to block out the sun, and when the mating was over they ripped like a broken heart, one hawk flying east and one flying north. I turned to you and said, ?Yes, I will come to your wedding.?