A Simple Thing (21 page)

Hillary. The girl who had been arrested twice for selling drugs.

“I
hate
having to protect him,” Katie said. “And I hate it you're so clueless.”

Quinn took one final, furious look at Katie and then ran, across the school field and the dirt road, disappearing on the path into the woods on the other side.

“Quinn!” Matt called after him. “Quinn!”

“It's fine,” Susannah said. “Let him be alone. That path leads home.”

“That's why I smashed Otis's stupid wife,” Katie said. “I was trying to talk to him about behaving like a
normal
person on the first day of school here, and he wouldn't listen. It pissed me off.”

“I knew things were bad at home,” Susannah said. “I didn't realize—”

“You have no idea about anything,” Katie said. “You worry about totally stupid things like Barefoot growing marijuana or what I'm doing with Hood. Maybe you should be worried about what a completely neurotic person you are. I can't
stand
being stuck with you. Dad can't even stand you; that's why he didn't care that you moved here.”

Susannah looked at Matt. He stood with both hands in his pockets, looking uncomfortable.

“We need to end this conversation,” he said. He turned to Lila. “Sorry you've had to listen to all this, Lila. Come on, let's get in the truck and go home.”

“
Matt,
” Susannah said. She jogged a few steps to catch up to him as he walked toward the truck. “You have to say something to her, shut her down for being so rude.”

“Susannah.” He stopped and turned to face her. “I have not seen my kids in six weeks. I've been here ten days and spent most of it lecturing Katie for everything she's done wrong. I'm leaving in a few days and I won't see her again for another month. I'm not going to nag her every time she acts like a typical teenager and picks on her brother or sasses you. Quinn needs to learn to give it back to her, to stick up for himself, and you need to learn that, too, frankly.”

“What?” Susannah was overcome with a blind anger. “
No,
I don't,” she said. “You're just so emotionally uptight you don't understand what it's like to get your feelings hurt.”

“Are you kidding?” Matt's voice was incredulous.

“Nothing gets to you; nothing touches you. It doesn't bother you if Quinn's getting bullied or Katie is cruel or if we decide to leave—”

“Oh, for Christ's sake!”

“You think I would have come here if—just once—you had wrapped your arms around me and said, ‘Don't go'?”

But of course he hadn't done that; no one,
no one,
could love her that much.

“And if I'd done that, then you would have been mad at me for holding you back,” he said. “I can't win. How do you think I feel, being the one left behind? This isn't the first time you've run away.”

“Oh, come on. I left for a few days when we weren't even married yet.”

“And will you go again the next time things get difficult?”

Lila and Katie caught up, and Lila put a hand on Susannah's shoulder.

“Susie?” she said. “What's the matter?”

Susannah whirled to face her. “As though
you
care,” she said. “It's ironic, isn't it, that I married someone just like you, someone who doesn't think I'm worth protecting?”

Susannah ran then, past the truck and into the woods, and on the path toward home. She ran until her lungs were burning and she couldn't run anymore and slowed to a walk. She stopped for a minute and leaned forward, hands on her knees, taking in deep breaths of the clean air. A thrush, with its burnt orange throat, hopped along the ground just beyond the path. Moss grew thick and green in the decaying stump of a fallen cedar, bright against the grays and browns of the bark. She stood up. Looking at it all calmed her in some strange way. She was surrounded by decay—the rotting stump, the moldy leaves, the loamy soil—yet it all fed new life.

Katie's brusque attitude over the last year had opened old wounds. Somehow Katie and her father had become jumbled together, their harsh criticisms a reminder of all her failings. Lila had never stood up for her; Matt wouldn't stand up for her.

Until Katie's adolescence, Susannah had never doubted Matt was on her side, even when she had found it hard to be on her own side. She thought of their wedding day, when he'd faced down her father in front of the entire church. She had planned to have
both
her parents walk her down the aisle, to recognize her mother while not excluding her father. But her father—still an alcoholic, with an alcoholic's quick temper and hypersensitivity to any perceived slight—had been irate at what he saw as an insult depriving him of his right to give away his only daughter.

“After all,” he said, “I'll never walk Janie down the aisle.”

He'd showed up drunk on the day of the wedding, not slur-his-words-and-stumbling drunk, but drunk enough to have a razor-sharp edge of anger slice beneath his smile. At the back of the church before the music began, he had elbowed Lila out of the way and said, “I'm walking my daughter down the aisle
alone
.”

Her mother had glanced at Susannah, looked at her ex-husband, and stepped back.
She doesn't want to make a scene at my wedding,
Susannah had thought. I
don't want to make a scene at my wedding. And he knows it, he knows us both that well. The bastard
.

“Dad, we agreed—” she had started to say, but her mother shook her head and mouthed: “Don't.” The music began; the bridesmaids started to march; the guests turned expectantly in their seats. Susannah's father took her arm and led her to the doorway.

And then Matt, standing in the front of the church with his brothers and Jon, had seen Susannah and her father there alone, with her mother behind them. He had folded his lips into a firm line, waited a beat for the bridesmaids to line up at the front of the church, and then walked straight down the aisle, to the surprised gasps of the crowd.

“You're beautiful,” he had whispered to Susannah. Then to her father, “Mr. McGilvra, you look fine. Great day, isn't it?” His words were pleasant, but his voice had an undercurrent of anger so fierce that Susannah drew back. He stepped around them to Susannah's mother, pulled her forward, and placed her firmly on Susannah's other side.

“We all love Susannah,” he said. “Let's walk with her together.” And he had given them a shove, nodded to the minister, who signaled the organist, and they had walked down the aisle, the four of them, with Susannah's parents on either side of her and Matt behind them, nodding and smiling at the guests.

He had been her champion. Which is why she had felt even more betrayed over this last year when he failed to champion her with Katie.

When Susannah emerged from the woods at the side of the meadow, she headed to the barn. She slid back the heavy wooden door and stepped inside. The pale afternoon light streamed in through the window.

She walked over to stand in front of her work in progress. Her scarecrow was a three-foot-tall angel made of scrap metal and wood and glass. She'd started by painting a face on a piece of tin, a girl with bright pink lips and golden brown hair and penetrating brown eyes. Something about the eyes had looked soulful to Susannah, so she had designed a halo out of a bicycle rim, with spokes still attached, and covered it with pieces of pale blue and green sea glass and bright copper wire. She cut giant tin wings out of scrap metal. The arms were thin plumbing pipes, and the body was a long, colorful, patchwork dress made from old tin cans, the kind that had the colors and words printed right on the tin, and not on paper labels. Susannah had cut them and flattened them and drilled holes in them and stitched them together with copper wire.

She'd been working on it for three weeks now. But all at once, she saw the angel sculpture differently. It was whimsical, sure. Maybe even bold or intriguing, as Jim might say. But what she saw now, for the first time, was that the angel with the big smile and brown eyes and wavy hair was Janie, the ghost that haunted her life.

Chapter 21

Betty 2011

Betty lowered herself into the armchair in front of Barefoot's fireplace. The white chair was comfortable—plush and soft but not so deep you'd sink down into it and be stuck forever. Barefoot brought over the Tibetan traveling medicine chest he used as an end table and placed it next to her chair, then went to the kitchen and returned with a glass of wine for her and a beer for himself. He put his beer down on the mantel and bent to put another log on the fire. The wood crackled and the flames flared and streamed upward, casting a coppery glow on the still-fine angles of Barefoot's cheekbones, the lines of his jaw. He was a beautiful man, even with the crow's feet and furrows and now-white hair. She never tired of looking at his face.

He picked up his beer and sat down in the armchair opposite hers.

“So has Katie been here this week?” she said.

“Nope. Although she did slide a letter of apology under my door a few days ago.”

Betty took a long sip of her wine. “It's a grape variety,” she said, looking at him over her glass.

He shook his head. “Rose hips. You like it?”

She nodded. “It's very good.” She took another sip. “What will you say to Katie?”

“I'll tell her I can't trust her and don't want her to work for me.”

Betty put her glass down on the chest. She knew not to ask for a coaster; Barefoot believed that things—even precious things—should be
used,
not revered.

“She's not a bad kid.”

“I know she's not a bad kid,” he said. “She's worked her ass off on the boat and done a good job. She's smart, too.” He stood up to poke the fire again. “And that mother of hers
could
use a little antianxiety medicine once in a while. Don't know that she'd be willing to try marijuana again, but I could make her a good calming tea.”

Betty smiled. “I like Susannah. She's got a good heart; God, she'd cut off a finger to help you if you needed it. But she is a worrier. She's like Jim; she cares about things too much and thinks about things too much.” Betty ran her hand over the smooth white fabric on the arm of her chair. “Sometimes I worry she cares about Jim too much. I'm glad her husband's here now.”

“Where the hell is Fiona?”

“She'll be back in time for Christmas.”

Barefoot raised both eyebrows. “I'll believe that when I see it. She's a fine woman, but she shouldn't leave Jim and those boys alone for so long.”

“Susannah's doing the same thing.”

“And they're both wrong.”

“It's what Bill did.”

Barefoot shook his head. “Ah, ah, ah, woman, I'm not going to fall into that trap. I have not said a word against your husband since the day your son finished his swimming lessons, and I'm not going to start now.”

Betty smiled, and nodded in acknowledgment. “I've had my reservations about Fiona, as you know, but I believe she loves Jim and those boys. I think she was just feeling claustrophobic. She's a dozen years younger than Jim, you know, and married him when she was twenty. She's put in plenty of years working and living here. I don't begrudge her this sabbatical, if you will, at least not anymore.”

Betty glanced at the window, at the dusk filling the panes, the endless sky above the cliff top. “She e-mails him every day. Jim's showed me a few of the notes. I get the impression she's figured out enough to know she likes and needs to do some kind of work, but that Sounder is home and she's in love with her husband.”

“For your son's sake, I hope that's true.”

“You've always been a cynic.”

“I've always been a realist, Elizabeth.”

“So have I,” she said.

“Very true.”

He had asked her to marry him once, two or three years after Bill's death. She had been planting beets one cool April evening when he had walked up the drive, carrying a basket of fresh herbs and greens from his greenhouse. He never came without bringing her something. One day it had been two glossy black feathers he found on the cliff top (“a Brandt's cormorant,” he told her), another day it was a warm felt cap he'd picked up while traveling in Turkey.

He had watched her until she finished planting the row. She straightened up and turned to him.

“I would marry you, Elizabeth,” he had said.

She remembered the tenderness in his blue eyes, the gravity in his voice.

“I know you would,” she said. “But you don't have to. I don't need that.”

Now a knock on the door surprised both of them. Barefoot—ever alert from his years in wild, remote places—picked up the wrought-iron poker and went to the door, the poker gripped firmly in one hand. He opened the door to reveal Katie standing on the porch, her cheeks red with cold. He scowled.

“Can I come in?” Katie said. “Please?”

Barefoot stared at her for a moment, then nodded. “Don't get too comfortable, though.”

Katie stepped inside and stood on the richly colored prayer rug by the door, uncertain whether or not to take a step farther. Barefoot closed the door behind her.

“You walk over?”

Katie nodded.

“That's a long, cold walk. Your parents know you're here?”

Katie nodded again.

“And?”

“I wrote you a letter. Did you get it?”

Barefoot nodded. “I did.”

“I want to keep working with you,” Katie said. “I'm really sorry.”

“My herbs are drugs. I can't have someone around here I can't trust.”

“I know. I was really wrong. I'll never do anything like that again, I promise.” She looked at him straight on. “Please.”

Barefoot turned around and walked back to his chair and sat down. He began to tick her transgressions off with his fingers. “One, you stole from me,” he said. “Two, you used a medicinal herb I had prepared and gave it to someone without my authorization. Three, you gave a medicinal herb to someone without her knowledge or consent. Four, you destroyed a damn good batch of cupcakes when you dropped 'em on the floor to cover your tracks. And five, well, five the whole thing pisses me off.”

“I know.” Katie stood on the prayer rug, still in her coat and gloves. Her nose was dripping from the cold outside and she lifted her arm and wiped it on her sleeve. “I know I messed up. But I really like working on the boat and learning how to use all the tools. I think it's amazing you know so much about herbs and what to do with them. And it's really cool you lived in Persia and all those places. I like hanging out here. I even like your stuff.” She gestured toward the carved stone horse's head on the mantel, the jewel-toned Indian painting of a Sikh noble and his mistress above the fireplace, the coppery-red Persian rug on the floor.

“I don't care what you like,” Barefoot said.

Betty gave him a look. He didn't have to be
quite
so harsh.

“What have you done to make it right with your mother?” Barefoot said.

Katie sighed. “I apologized. I wrote her a letter, too.”

“Words are easy,” Barefoot said.

“Well, my mom is not an easy person to deal with,” Katie said.

“You haven't made it easy for her, have you?” Barefoot said. “I understand you almost drank yourself to death before she brought you out here.”

“I can't believe she told you about that,” Katie said.

“Is it true?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“Then she only told the truth.”

“Oh, my God,” Katie said. She pulled the knit cap off her head with an angry hand. “If you knew what my mother was like in Tilton, you wouldn't blame me.”

“Blame you for what? Drinking yourself into a stupor, or giving your mother pot cupcakes?”

“Anything!” Katie said. Angry tears filled her eyes.

Betty wanted to go to Katie and wrap her arms around her and say, “It's okay. Someday you won't have this much
feeling
about everything.” But instead she turned to Barefoot and said, “Go make this girl a cup of hot chocolate and let her warm up by the fire. Please.”

“It's okay,” Katie said. “I don't have to stay. I just wanted to be sure you got my letter.”

“Take your coat off,” Barefoot said. He stood and walked into the kitchen. Katie looked at Betty with some uncertainty, then took off her coat and hung it on the hook by the front door. She came over and sat down on the floor by the fireplace, near Toby, who was asleep on the rug in front of the fire. She put a hand on his head and rested it there.

“His bark is worse than his bite,” Betty said. “And I mean Barefoot, not the dog.”

Katie smiled then, a genuine smile that opened up her whole face.

Betty shifted her hips and settled back more comfortably into her chair. “Your mom is a worrier. I know that can be hard to live with.”

“Oh, my God,” Katie said. She was more relaxed now, maybe because Barefoot was out of the room; maybe because Barefoot had relented enough to let her in the door; maybe because she was sitting in front of a warm fire, petting Toby.

“You have no idea. She worries about
everything
. If I get a fever she thinks I have leukemia. If I'm home half an hour late, she thinks I've been hit by a car.”

“She has a vivid imagination,” Betty said.

Katie rolled her eyes. “Right. But it makes me feel”—she searched for the right word—“I don't know, it makes me feel
more unsafe
. Like everything is dangerous, or might be dangerous. I hate that.”

Betty nodded. “I can see that.”

Katie was silent for a few minutes, one hand absent-mindedly stroking Toby's ear. “It's like Zach, this guy I was dating that my mom hated? He wasn't afraid of anything; he never worried about things. So I didn't feel worried when I was hanging out with him.”

“You don't like the fact that you worry just like your mother does,” Barefoot said. He came out of the kitchen with a steaming mug in one hand and a plate of cookies in the other. He brought the mug to Katie and put the plate down on the medicine chest, next to Betty's wineglass. “Oatmeal chocolate chip,” he said. “Straight, no marijuana.” He scowled at Katie but his anger had lost its edge.

“I am not like my mom,” Katie said.

“You are,” Barefoot said. He sat down in his chair. “Whether you want to admit it or not. I'll tell you, it's only when I learned to accept that I was a lot like my mother that I began to be happier. I suspect you'll find that to be true yourself. Our mothers are the most influential in making us who we are. As long as you regard your mother with distaste, it's not possible to view yourself charitably, with the kindness and self-acceptance so essential to personal happiness. I suggest you practice standing in your mom's shoes and seeing the world, including yourself, from her perspective. If you do, you might begin to be happier and leave behind the miseries and discomforts that plague all of us in adolescence.”

Barefoot finished his speech. Katie's eyes were still on him. Betty couldn't help but smile. Everything he'd said was so quintessentially Barefoot. She was aware now that they were both in their eighties that their time together was not as limitless as it had once seemed to be. He was very precious to her.

“Honestly,” Katie said, “no offense or anything, but if I really thought I was just like my mother I wouldn't be able to stand myself.”

Barefoot shrugged. “Well, that's a hard way to go through life. Your choice.”

A long silence fell then, punctuated only by the steady sound of Toby's snoring and the occasional crackle of the fire. Finally Barefoot leaned forward in his chair.

“I'm going to put you on probation,” he said to Katie. “You can come back to work on the boat tomorrow, but you will not be allowed in my house or the greenhouse until you've demonstrated that I can trust you again. What that means is that you show up to work on time, do everything that's expected, clean up and put your tools away, and don't give me any crap.
If
you can do that for a month, I might let you back inside. Understood?”

Katie nodded. “Thank you.”

She stood up and put her mug down on the mantel. “I should go. Mom will think I've been crushed by a falling tree in the forest.”

Betty smiled. “You have a flashlight?”

“Yes.” She went to the door and got her coat, put it on, and pulled her cap out of the pocket. She paused, one hand on the doorknob. “Thanks again,” she said.

Barefoot walked over to the door and opened it for her. “Don't mess up,” he said.

Betty watched the door close behind Katie. She fished her cigarettes out of her shirt pocket, shook one out, and lit it. She blew out a long, satisfying stream of smoke.