A Simple Thing (9 page)

“Three,” Susannah said. “Janie. She was three.”

Betty shook her head. “That's heartbreaking.”

“It's even harder if you don't deal with it,” Barefoot said. He let go of her wrist. “Good God, you're afraid of boats so you decided to move to an
island
?”

“I'm facing my fears,” Susannah said, with more courage than she felt.

Barefoot slammed his hand on the wooden counter, palm down. “That's settled then. I have to go to Friday Harbor tomorrow and I understand you need groceries. We'll go in my boat. You can start getting over it tomorrow.”

Susannah looked at Barefoot. He looked like a crazy person, with his wiry eyebrows and piercing blue eyes and the bandanna tied around the top of his head. But she was so
tired
. Constant vigilance was hard, exhausting work.

“Okay,” she said. “I'd be happy to come with you tomorrow. Thanks.”

The kids appeared in the doorway, breathless from running, cheeks flushed.

“What's up?” Hood said. “Why did you need us to come back?”

“Susannah wants to get to know the island a little better before she lets the kids take kayaks out at night,” Jim said. “And it's getting late. School tomorrow.”

Susannah picked up her parka from the hook by the back door. “Thank you so much for dinner,” she said. “For everything. You've made us feel so welcome here. Here, let me help with the dishes.” She started toward the table, to clear the mugs and glasses, but was shooed away by Betty.

“It's your first night here,” Betty said. “Go home and get organized.”

Hood and Baker walked them home across the bumpy meadow to the white cottage. The windows of her little house gave off a warm glow, a cozy cocoon tucked inside the vast dark of the night.

“We moved Quinn's mattress into the utility room,” Baker said to Susannah, as they entered the cottage. “I slept there a lot when we lived here because Hood snores like you wouldn't believe.” He shot a merry look at his brother and began to snort loudly. Hood leaned over and cuffed him across the back of the head.

“We'll come by at eight to get you for school,” Hood said. Then the door closed behind the twins, and, for the first time since they'd set foot on Sounder, Susannah and her kids were alone.

 

“I can't believe you,” Katie said, turning to face her mother. “That was
so
embarrassing.”

“What?”

“You made us come in from kayaking because you freaked out,” Katie said. “You drag us here, we finally are doing
one
fun thing, and you act like we're some kind of babies. It's just like at home.” She began to cry, tears of rage and frustration.

“You guys are not great swimmers,” Susannah said. “I have no idea how sturdy the kayaks are. Were you wearing life jackets?”

“No!” Katie said. She stood in the middle of the living room, her hands clenched into fists at her sides. “Because we're not freaks! We had life jackets
with us,
but we didn't have them on. Baker and Hood go out in the kayaks all the time without wearing life jackets.”

“That's Baker and Hood.”

“And it should be us! I can't stand you. You're crazy!”

“I am not crazy,” Susannah said. She could not get over her reflex to defend herself when criticized. “It's my job to make sure you're safe.”

“It's your job to ruin my life,” Katie said. “If you want to know why I did stuff like go that party with Zach it's because I don't want to grow up to be like
you
.”

Susannah pulled her lips together. “That was your bad decision,” she said.

They glared at each other. Susannah could feel her heart thumping hard in her chest, a lump in her throat. She was exhausted, and ready to cry herself. “I'm going to unpack,” she said, and walked into her room and closed the door.

She took one look at her suitcase and decided to save unpacking for the morning. Instead, she collapsed into the bed, not even bothering to get undressed, and pulled the quilt over herself. She felt heavy and yet hollow, like a leaden pipe, spent with fatigue. She closed her eyes.

Minutes later, a scream from Quinn penetrated the door. Susannah jumped up and ran into the living room, where Quinn knelt on the floor, crying.

“She killed Otis's wife!” Quinn cried. “She killed Otis's wife!”

“What happened?”

“She threw Otis's wife at the wall,” Quinn said, wiping the tears from his cheeks with the back of one hand, and pointing at Katie. “I
hate
her!”

“He started it,”
Katie said.
“He's so dumb! He said—”

“I don't care who said what,” Susannah said. “How could you break Otis's wife? You know how important it was.”

Otis, whom Quinn had owned for six years, was a mild-mannered box turtle with one obsession: a ceramic turtle, roughly his own size, that Matt had found on a trip to Mexico. Otis loved this turtle with all the energy in his little carapaced self. He slept next to it at night, returned to it after his outside-the-cage forays during the day, and even made love to it, his shell clanking insistently against the ceramic. Often Quinn would find Otis on his back in his cage in the morning, unable to right himself after a particularly vigorous session of lovemaking.

“Did you know male turtles in the wild sometimes fall backward just like Otis after having sex?” Quinn had told Susannah. “Only they don't have me around to put them back on their feet and they can
die of starvation
. Really.”

Quinn loved his bizarre turtle facts as much as he loved Otis, which made it all the more outrageous that Katie had just hurled Otis's wife against the wall.

“I'll pick up the pieces,” Susannah said. “Quinn, go get ready for bed.”

“Why?” Susannah asked, after Quinn left the room. She stood facing Katie, both hands on hips. “Why would you do that?”

“Like you care why,” Katie said. “I don't want to talk about it.” She picked up her iPod, inserted the earbuds, and turned it on.

“I'm not finished talking to you,” Susannah said.

Katie sat down on the couch and put her feet up on the coffee table.

“How dare you. TURN THAT OFF
.”

“You never see my side of anything,” Katie said, her voice loud because of the music pounding through her headphones. “You assume your beloved little Quinnie would never provoke someone, right?”

“We're not talking about Quinn,” Susannah said. “We're talking about
you
. What you did was wrong.”

“You're right,” Katie said, her voice brittle with sarcasm. “You're always right.”

“You're unbelievably rude.” Susannah felt her anger rise up, wash over her. “Turn the music off
now
.”

“Get off my case,” Katie said. “You are such a
bitch
.”

Reflexively Susannah raised a hand to slap her, but then brought it down. Instead, she yanked the iPod out of her daughter's hands, turned, and marched to the bathroom, where she dropped it into the toilet and flushed.

There was a scream of pure outrage from Katie. “You're crazy!” she yelled, watching the swirl of water in the toilet. “You're totally crazy. Jesus!”

Susannah was so angry it was hard to breathe, her chest and throat thick. “If you can't show me the respect of listening when I talk to you, you don't deserve an iPod.”

Katie turned and ran from the room, and Susannah heard the slam of her bedroom door, muffled sobs. With a sigh, Susannah walked back into the living room and collapsed on the couch. Quinn followed her.

“Do you think Otis will die of grief?” he said.

She looked at him. “No, honey. I'm going to Friday Harbor tomorrow. Maybe I can find a new wife for Otis.”

Quinn looked hopeful. “That would be great. But it has to be just the right size.”

“I know. Go brush your teeth.”

She heard the trickle of water in the bathroom sink, the flush of the toilet.

“Mom?
Mom!
”

She jumped up and ran into the bathroom to find the toilet, clearly rebelling at the recent ingestion of Kate's iPod, overflowing onto the bathroom floor. She looked wildly around the room for a plunger, but didn't see one.

“Shit!” The water splashed over her shoes, onto her ankles. She grabbed towels and threw them onto the floor. She knew nothing about the mechanics of toilets. Was there a water shutoff valve? Had Jim showed it to her when he was explaining about distribution systems and 2D-watt bulbs or whatever the hell he'd been talking about?

Katie appeared in the doorway, walked over to the toilet, reached down, and turned a knob on the wall beneath it.

“That's where you shut the water off,” she said. “Baker and Hood showed me.”

“Thank God,” Susannah said. She sighed. She looked around and spotted a mop in the corner of the bathroom. She reached for it and turned to Katie. “You mop up. I'll call Jim in the morning about fixing the toilet. Until then, we'll just have to go outside.”

“Why do
I
have to mop?” Katie said. “
You're
the one who—”

Exhaustion and anger rose in Susannah and she shoved the mop at Katie with such force that the handle almost hit her in the forehead. Katie's eyes opened wide in surprise. “I'm
done,
” Susannah said. “Shut up and mop.”

Later, alone in bed, Susannah stared into the darkness and listened to something—a bat? a mouse?—rustle inside the wall. She lay on her usual side of the bed, even though Matt's side was empty. Katie wasn't speaking to her. Quinn had finally fallen asleep after twirling his hair so much that a handful of strands lay scattered across his pillow. She drifted into a restless sleep. Three times she thought she heard someone cry out, and each time she got up, made her way in to check on the kids, found them fast asleep, and stumbled back to bed. Finally, she crawled under the covers and lay on her back, eyes wide open, until the darkness began to fade and the day awoke.

Chapter 9

Betty 1954

Betty discovered the affair by accident. She was seven months pregnant, and so big the doctor thought she might be carrying twins. A mid-August heat wave, unusual for Seattle, had caused her to retain water, and her hands were so swollen she couldn't even wear her wedding ring. She woke up one morning and felt even hotter and more out of sorts than usual. Her back hurt. Her abdomen felt crampy. She was bloated. She decided to take the ferry from Seattle to Bainbridge and back again, to be on the water and get the cool breeze. She liked the idea of doing something as frivolous as riding the ferry back and forth just for the sake of the ride. It felt wickedly indulgent, even though it cost only five cents. She tried to get Bobbie to come with her, but Bobbie had a decorator coming and a doctor's appointment and thought Betty slightly crazy for suggesting it.

Betty didn't see them until the return trip. She was sitting on a bench on the deck, on the starboard side of the ferry so she was in the shade cast by the cabin. The dull ache in her lower back had turned into an insistent pain, and she was glad to sit down. The breeze whipped at her skirt, lifted her hair, and cooled her warm, swollen skin. She was gazing at the Seattle skyline, thinking about the baby. If it was a boy, Bill wanted to name him Michael, after one of his war buddies. But Michael was so common. Betty preferred something different, like Grady or Riley. If it was a girl, Bill wanted to name her Roxanne. When he told her, Betty had laughed and laughed.
Roxie
. It sounded girlish and tough at the same time, and she loved it.

Betty was sure it would be a boy. She was much more comfortable in the company of males, even though she was close to her sisters, and found it hard to imagine parenting a daughter. And she was so in love with Bill—she wanted a boy for him, and for her, because a boy would seem even more a part of Bill.

The baby kicked inside her, a thump against her rib cage, and then rolled, a ripple across her belly. She still couldn't wrap her mind around the baby as a person, someone she would caress and nurture and love. And she couldn't imagine, in her wildest dreams, loving the baby more than she loved Bill.

For a few weeks after she told him about the pregnancy, he was different. Not angry, not sad, just different. He got up and went to work in the mornings and came home and ate dinner and smiled at her and read the paper and drank a beer and went to bed. She went with him, of course, but even then he would put a hand on her hip, lean forward to kiss her on the cheek, and then roll over with a yawn to face the wall. The passionate kisses and eager sex that had characterized the early days of their marriage were gone.

He hadn't made love to her since she'd told him she was pregnant. That was normal, the doctor said, and probably best for the baby. But Betty missed the feel of his smooth skin against hers, and missed him. He hadn't mentioned Alaska once in the past few months, either, and had put away the topographical map of Chugiak that had laid stretched out on the coffee table for weeks and weeks.

A light, bubbling laugh caught her attention and she turned her head. A woman in a yellow dress leaned back against the green iron railing of the ferry. The dress was nipped in at the waist with a white belt, and her waist was so small that the man who stood opposite her, with his back to Betty, could have spanned it with his two hands. She had red hair and wore a jaunty little green hat, and she was laughing and looking up at the man as he bent to kiss her. And something about the set of the man's shoulders, the angle of his neck as he leaned in to the woman in the yellow dress, sent a shock of recognition through Betty.

“Bill?”

He didn't hear her.

Betty struggled to stand up. She was so big now she couldn't stand without pushing herself up off the arms of a chair, or giving both hands to Bill to pull her up. But there were no arms on the bench she sat on now, and Bill was there with his back to her. She braced both hands on the bench beside her hips and tried to stand, but the rolling motion of the ferry caught her, and she lost her balance and fell backward awkwardly. She hit her tailbone hard against the metal bench.

Bill turned and saw her. And it was no coincidence, she thought then and later, that a pain ripped through her abdomen at exactly the moment his eyes met hers.

Her twins were born the next morning, two months too soon, and died that night.

 

Bobbie wanted her to leave him. Betty knew—the small part of her that could still think rationally, that wasn't muddled with grief and rage and yearning—she
should
leave him. But Bill was broken. The death of the babies, both boys, had compounded his guilt to such an extent that Betty began to worry about his sanity. He didn't leave her side for a week, sleeping on the floor in the hospital next to her bed. The nurses would kick him out when visiting hours ended, but somehow, some way, he would sneak in again, and there he would be in the morning, curled on the floor with his head resting on Betty's overnight bag.

He brought her flowers. He brought her a ring with a tiny blue sapphire, representing fidelity. He swore to her that it was one time and that it had gone no further than a few kisses. The woman was a secretary at Boeing, and she'd flirted and flirted with him, and he'd been weak, pathetic really, and he had no idea why. Except that he was terrified by the responsibility of having kids, of being moored to his desk job and Seattle and a life of unbroken sameness stretching ahead of him endlessly like railroad tracks across the prairie. But now even that wasn't as terrifying as the thought of losing her. He loved her.

She spent the first week in a haze of narcotics and sleep. Bobbie floated in and out, as did Mother, and Grammy. Bill was the one constant.

“You can come home with me,” Bobbie whispered to her several times.

Betty shook her head. How could she make a decision like that, especially now? She was broken and Bill was broken and they were broken. She wanted to stay in the hospital forever, with the efficient nurses and the smell of rubbing alcohol and the crisp sheets. She wanted to float away on little blue pills and have other people bring her food and help her bathe and pet her—
baby
her
.
Baby
her.

It was something about that thought, as well as the fullness of her aching milk-laden breasts and her empty belly and empty arms, that finally induced Betty's grief. She lay on her back and the tears rolled down from the corners of her eyes into her ears. She cried for the babies, for Bill, for herself, for all of it. Bill was asleep on the floor but woke up when he heard her sobs. He came over and knelt next to the bed and wrapped his arms around her and buried his face against her side.

“I'm so sorry,” he said, over and over. “So sorry. It's because of me you lost the babies. The shock—I know I did it to you, and I can't forgive myself for that. Just give me a chance to make it up to you, please, Betty.” And then, for the first time since she'd known him, he cried.

Reflexively, she put out a hand to stroke his head, and at her touch he looked up at her with those eyes. She looked back at him, at the shame and the hope in his face, and felt something inside her soften. Her nod was barely perceptible, but it was enough. His face melted with gratitude, and he climbed onto the bed next to her and spooned her until they both fell asleep.

Six months later, she moved with him to Sounder.

 

It was a compromise, as Bobbie had suggested, meant to mark the beginning of their new life together, their new commitment to each other. Betty wouldn't go to Alaska—it was too far from Seattle and her family, who were more important to her than ever now that she faced the possibility of a life without children of her own. But Sounder would offer the adventure Bill craved, a place in some ways even more remote and wild than Anchorage. They'd have a farm; they would work together. And, Betty thought, although she didn't say it even to Bobbie, the temptations would be fewer.

For six months they read books on farming and gardening and leafed through government pamphlets on raising chickens. Bill wanted to keep goats, too, for the milk. They saved every penny they could. Bill knew someone who knew someone who lived on Orcas Island and occasionally went over to Sounder, and this buddy kept his eyes and ears open for them and called one day to say he'd heard of a sweet little farm on the west side of Sounder that had gone up for sale.

They put down a deposit sight unseen—hard to get more adventurous than that, in Betty's opinion. The farm abutted a sheltered bay, and included a white cottage, a barn, and eighty acres of fields and woods. They gave notice to their landlord, sold their furniture, and packed up two duffel bags with their clothes and shoes and the blue and white quilt that had been a wedding gift from Grammy. Bobbie saw them off at the pier downtown. They were catching a ride on a fishing boat to Friday Harbor, and then they'd take the Sounder mail boat from there.

Bobbie took Betty's face in both her hands. “You have yourself a good adventure,” she said. “I love you. Don't work too hard, and don't take any crap.” This last with a nod toward Bill, who was loading their bags onto the boat. “I know this is what you want, so I'm behind you.” She leaned in closer to whisper in Betty's ear. “And if,
if,
for any reason, you need to leave him and come home, you are always welcome to live with me.”

As Bill came up to say it was time to go, Bobbie turned to him. “Take care of my sister,” she said. “
Good
care.”

Bill met her eyes and nodded and placed a protective arm around Betty's shoulders. “I will,” he said.

Betty was prepared for the stab of loneliness that hit her as the Seattle skyline disappeared from view, and the fear. But it wasn't until she turned to look at her husband, who stood next to her with his hands on the railing, that she realized how angry she was, and that she had no idea what she would do with all that rage.

 

She stayed angry for most of the next six months. And the damnedest thing was that she didn't
want
to be so angry. She and Bill had talked and talked about this move. She had agreed to it. She had even in a sense
chosen
it; the San Juan Islands had been her idea, after an evening spent studying a map and knowing she could never go to Alaska and knowing, too, that Bill had to get away. She wasn't going to have children—she was convinced of that even if the doctor wasn't—and she didn't want to stay in Seattle and be the doting aunt to her sisters' children, or the housewife with the impeccable living room and perfect garden. She might as well find something to do, and do it with Bill.

She read the books on farming and the pamphlets on chickens and decided that burying herself in physical labor might be the answer. Sounder it was, she said to Bill, and meant it. He was excited at her excitement, humble and grateful that she'd forgiven him, that she was willing to make this move.

But once they arrived, she could feel the anger spread in her like an infection, seeping out from her core into her limbs, her face, her eyes. Her throat choked with it; her tongue was thick with the words she wanted to say and didn't.

Sounder wasn't the problem. She liked the farm and the island and the people more than she could have imagined. Neighbors pitched in to help them plow and plant and build the chicken house, and they were constantly getting invited to “bees” of some kind or another—a cleanup bee at the schoolhouse to wash windows and paint walls, a cider bee at the Cummings' to pick and press apples, a work bee at another couple's farm to rip out hardhack and scotch broom and wild gooseberry.

The cottage was fine, too, and suited Betty much better than the neat little overly decorated house her sister had in Seattle. Sure, the bathroom was a hundred yards away behind a towering cedar, and the floor sloped so badly that if you dropped a marble it would roll all the way from the front door to the back, and the curtains didn't match the couch. But the big cast-iron stove warmed the whole living area, and the old green rockers on the porch were the most comfortable chairs she'd ever known, and the quiet all around them penetrated to a deep place within her and calmed her.

Bill was attentive and thoughtful and careful with her, but on guard. She tried not to let her anger show—he had apologized and apologized, after all, and what was the point of holding on to it or talking it to death? But she knew it was evident in the set of her lips and the tone of her voice and the tenseness in her body when he touched her, in the staccato sound of her knife on the cutting board and the way her eyes slipped away from his gaze. They didn't talk about it, but it rose up between them like steam from a locomotive, growing thicker and thicker.

Bill, to her surprise, didn't respond to her anger with a frustrated fury of his own, or with the kind of hangdog shame that would have sickened her, would have made her feel as though she'd been the one to do something wrong. Instead he got up in the mornings in the gray light of early day, got the fire going in the stove, made a pot of coffee, then went out to the chicken house to collect eggs, feed and water the chickens, shovel out droppings, and milk the goats, all before breakfast. By the time he came in, she often had bacon cooking, and griddlecakes they would eat with honey from Alice MacDonald's bees. Then they'd head out together to begin the weeding or mulching or harvesting in the fields they'd managed to get planted in the spring after they moved in.