Acts of God (32 page)

“I don't know.” I shook my head. “I have no idea. I just know that I want to be there for you.”

“Then leave me alone for now,” he said. “Let me call you after the funeral.”

The funeral was held the next day at Our Lady of the Meadows, a Catholic church in Prairie Vista. I bought a black dress and sat in the back. I was ashamed and tears rolled down my cheeks. This was all my fault. I'd brought ruin on all these people. At the funeral, Danielle stared straight ahead with cold, dark eyes. I kept thinking I'd see her break down and weep, but she just stared.

Once Danielle turned and looked at the crowd that stood behind her in the church and for a moment her eyes landed on me. But there was a blankness to her stare. Nick cried on the coffin. He wept and broke down and he had to be pulled away. I stood at a distance, watching him. In the end Margaret was buried in Winonah in the cemetery near the lake, the place where she'd always wanted to be.

That afternoon I joined the mourners back at his house and Nick took me aside. “I care for you, Tess. I really do. But I'm going to need some time. Go home and in a few weeks I'll come out and see you.”

“But I don't want to go home. This town is my home too. I want to be with you.”

He shook his head. “Not now.”

When I returned to Vicky's that evening, she was waiting up for me, reading the
Winonah Weekly.
Her slender white fingers held the paper and I thought how she did have beautiful hands, how it was right that people should pay to admire them. She passed me the newspaper. “Here. It's all here.”

The article gave the details of Margaret's death, said that Margaret Blair Schoenfield's car had stopped on the railroad tracks at a well-lit crossing. It was assumed to be a suicide and that she was despondent over her failed marriage to the son of a former football star. She was survived by one child, age ten, and her husband, from whom she was estranged. I read that the engineer said he saw her coming only at the very last moment, as if she'd appeared out of nowhere, and then it was too late. He wasn't even traveling fast because he was coming into the station, though it was not a scheduled stop. She just drove on the tracks and stayed there, he said. She didn't move.

“May I keep this?” I asked Vicky after I'd read it through.

“Of course you can.” Vicky tore it out of the
Winonah Weekly
for me. “Still saving things. You haven't changed much, have you?” She handed me the clipping and I folded it neatly, then tucked it inside my wallet.

*   *   *

That night I went to Paradise and Patrick was there. He sat down beside me and had a beer. “I saw you at the funeral,” he said.

I nodded, sipping my beer. “I feel terrible…” Patrick reached across, clutching my fingers. “But I saw Margaret just last week. She acted as if everything was fine. As if there were no bad feelings.” Tears started to come to my eyes; in fact, I did not understand what had happened or why. I tried to reconstruct what had happened when I'd seen Margaret that day for coffee.

What had I missed? Some gesture, some word I hadn't quite gotten at the time? Of course it was strange that she'd given me those items that she'd saved over the years. But her manner was so natural, almost breezy. Now as I sat there, with Patrick's fingers wrapped around mine, I was certain there was something I'd overlooked, something I just hadn't seen.

“Tess, there was always something off about her. I don't know what it was. Maybe this doesn't have anything to do with you.”

I just shook my head. “How could it not?”

“I don't know,” Patrick said, “but maybe it doesn't.”

Just then the door opened and Nick walked in with a crowd of friends. They were all quiet and subdued. When Nick saw me, he gave me a little nod, but he didn't come my way. “Just give him some time,” Patrick said. “He'll come around. He doesn't know what hit him.”

“Thanks.” I patted Patrick on the hand. “That's good advice.”

“Don't blame yourself, Tess,” Patrick said.

When Patrick left, I stayed at the bar drinking my beer. I ordered another, but felt strange sitting there alone. I looked over at Nick, who sat with his friends, and gave him a little smile. At last he got up and came over to the bar and sat down beside me. His movements were wooden, like those of an actor uncomfortable in his role.

“Tess,” Nick said at last. “I don't know how to say this, but I can't see you for a while. I feel sickened by everything. I don't know that I'll ever feel any differently.”

“But it will pass,” I told him. I hesitated, but then I said, “We can be together now if we want.” I spoke softly, just loud enough for him to hear me. “There's nothing to keep us apart.”

“Yes, there is,” he said, shaking his head.

“Who? What?” I asked him, my voice quivering.

I was sure he was going to say Danielle, but instead he said, “Margaret will keep us apart. That's who.”

40

Because I keep everything, and
I always have, I knew just where I'd find the yearbooks. They were in the back of the old storage closet off the garage. When I got home, I dug them out and propped them up on the table in the breakfast nook. Then I went to the index and found where her name was listed.

I spent the next few days in my breakfast nook, where Francis Eagger drank himself to death, staring at the pictures of Margaret Blair. In fact she was not in many pictures. Though it wasn't easy in our high school to avoid being in the yearbook, she had managed fairly well. But in the few I found of her, Margaret seemed to be gazing down, the way she used to when she lived above Santini's Liquor in Prairie Vista. She stood in the back row, off to one side, her long black hair tumbling around her face. Was she hiding? Didn't she want to be seen?

In some she was just a blur, as if she had moved at the moment the picture was being snapped. This wouldn't surprise me at all. Because there was something about her even then that could never be pinned down, that was always trying to get away.

Margaret, frozen in time. She wouldn't wear reading glasses or see her hair turn gray. She wouldn't get those little wrinkles I was starting to get around the mouth, those furrows on the brow that Jade said came from frowning in your sleep. You look angry, Jade tells me, when you sleep. Margaret would just stay right there, the way she was.

Turning to the back of the yearbook I read what had been inscribed: “To Tess from Margaret, don't read what I've written in the corner.” She had dog-eared a corner of the page. I opened this and read, “Only rats look in corners.”

*   *   *

When the kids got home from work that night, Jade took one look at me. “What is it, Mom? What's wrong? You look terrible.”

Then I told them about Margaret. It all poured out.

“What was it?” Ted asked. “What did it say?”

“It said that she'd waited as long as she could.”

“What did she mean by that?”

“I don't know. Maybe she was waiting for Nick to come back to her. I don't know.”

Jade was very upset. “Mom,” she said, “what're you going to do?”

“I don't know,” I told them, “be patient. Wait.” A chill passed through me as I said that. Wait for how long? Wasn't that just what Margaret had tried to do?

“God,” Ted said, “did she kill herself because of you?”

Jade motioned for him to be quiet, but that was the truth of it, wasn't it? She'd killed herself because of me. “Yes,” I said, “I believe she did. And she left behind her child.”

I stayed up that night, drinking. It wasn't something I normally did, but I could not sleep. I longed for Nick, but made a promise to myself that I would not call. I'd hear from him when he was ready. And with time I felt certain he would be.

But finally I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to hear his voice. In the morning when I picked up the phone to dial, my neighbor Betsy was on the line. She was talking to a doctor's office, setting up an appointment. I didn't want to listen, but I did. Infertility. She had tried everything to have a child.

The next day when I saw Betsy, I gave her a wave. I thought perhaps I'd have her over for coffee someday.

Later that night when I couldn't sleep, I poured myself a brandy. Then I picked up the phone and called Nick. I let it ring three, four times. Night after night I phoned, thinking he would be waiting by the phone, that he would know it was me.

But he never answered. I left messages, but he never called me back. I found I still could not sleep. I wondered where he was, what he was doing. I had dreams of him at night, of his hands on my body, of his body looming above mine. I found myself raw and exposed as I hadn't been since I was a child.

Once I phoned and Danielle answered. I heard her voice on the other end, insistent, almost in a rage. “Who's there,” she shouted into the phone and I hung up.

*   *   *

In the paths in the hills above my house wildflowers grow. At certain times of the year after heavy rains the hills are carpeted in small blue and white flowers, thick patches of yellow, tiny shades of rose. It was that time of year now. I thought if I forced myself to get up early and go for a run, I'd be able to sleep at night. I began getting up before seven and heading into the hills. I'd run several miles, making a loop that brought me home. Each day I ran farther and farther, as if I had to get away. Morning after morning I would be gone an hour, then two. The path I took was paved, but it quickly turned to dirt. Wildflowers lined the path. Trees dropped back after the first mile or so. Higher up, the landscape turned to desert; scrub pine, thistle weed grew in abundance. I ran until I couldn't see the highway or any houses. Sometimes I thought I could just keep going and never stop.

One morning, the air was brisk, the ground firm beneath my feet. I ran for a mile or so, then higher. At the point where I should have turned back, I kept going, my body unwilling to return. I was soaring. I was flying and climbing as if I could just keep going. As if there was nothing to stop me.

In the hills the day was warmer and sweat dripped, evaporating as soon as it hit the air. So this was what it felt like to be free, to be a bird. My body flying through the air. My body flying like the wind. I went up higher into the hills, way above Salinas, behind my heels was a trail of dust. I kicked up the dirt as I climbed into the scrub pine, the desolate places where nothing will grow.

I was high above the ocean and I couldn't even tell it was an ocean anymore. It was as if the sky started just there at the shore, which was now the horizon. I didn't hear a thing except my heart and my feet pounding. My breathing was a steady pant and sweat poured down me, my T-shirt clung to my breasts. If someone wanted to rape me, I always told myself as I ran up here, he'd have to catch me first. So far no one had tried. I never saw anybody up here. There used to be a guy who trained in these hills but I hadn't seen him in a long time and anyway, we didn't run at the same time of the day. I was running on straight to a grove of pines, like nothing would stop me or could stop me, and then I saw her.

Those yellow eyes fixed on me. A dead stare. It took everything in me to stop. Stop cold. I thought my heart would burst. I'd die right there. It is a fitting end, I thought. Looking her in the eyes. Our eyes fixed on each other. She was in a branch, a low branch, and poised. Ten yards farther and she would have pounced on my neck. Now it's this standoff, I think, and if I move, I'm dinner. Or maybe I'm dinner no matter what I do. I'm a dead woman right here. I'm going to be eaten alive and they'll only know it's me from the dental records if they find my teeth. One of us has got to move and I know it won't be me.

Then I saw it. Her shoulder twitched. Just a tiny twitch but enough to tell me she was ready to make her move. She jumped down and all those yellow muscles rippled and her flesh moved like sound waves, like foam rubber. Muscles moving and with a thud and four rising waves of dust, she hit the ground, her yellow eyes never off me.

My heart pounded in my chest. Hairs bristled on my arms and I couldn't catch my breath. I stood there, staring straight at her as she stared at me. I vowed I would not be the first to move. Then suddenly, with all those powerful yellow muscles rippling, she turned and walked away.

*   *   *

I arrived home, panting, hot, dripping wet. Though I'd walked the last half mile home, my heart was still pounding, my hands shaking as I opened the mailbox. There was the usual assortment of junk mail, bills I couldn't pay, solicitations from organizations that I made nominal contributions to. Walking into the kitchen, I threw the mail down on the counter and poured myself a glass of herbal ice tea. I downed the tea, pressed an ice cube to my temple. Then I opened a drawer to look for some Tylenol.

There in the drawer where I kept recipes and over-the-counter drugs was the envelope Margaret had given me the last time I saw her—the one that contained my old dog tag, bird feathers, and the Chicago Cubs T-shirt. I sat down in the breakfast nook with my herbal tea and opened the envelope once more, spreading the items in front of me.

I kept the feathers in front of me, moved the dog tag and T-shirt to the side. The clipping the feathers were wrapped in was from an old Kenosha newspaper, dated some forty years ago. It was yellow and tattered, almost crumbling in my hands. I hadn't noticed it when Margaret first gave me the envelope, but now I unfolded and read it. On the back was an advertisement for soap. A notice about a missing dog. On the other side were obituaries. One was for a schoolteacher from Milwaukee who had been a believer in equal education. The other was for a Wisconsin man who had jumped or fallen to his death off a railroad bridge when he was forty-nine years old. Then it gave the funeral arrangements, and that was all.