Digging Out (35 page)

When he gets close, he smiles. “Hi. You’re okay?”

Hannah throws herself on me. She has grown. I hold her, closing my eyes for a moment and breathing in the possibility of the two of us staying here with Evan, forever. Something inside opens, but it is still dark and scary. “I’m okay,” I say, in answer to Dafydd. The three of us continue to stand, looking out over the hills, together.

“I can’t believe you grew up here, Mom,” Dafydd says. “It’s just magnificent. Not wild like the Rockies, or rugged like the Santa
Monica Mountains, but man, it’s sure a force all its own. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything so gorgeous.”

“It is, isn’t it?” I feel proud, as if by being Welsh I get to take credit for this glory.

“If you’re feeling better, Mommy, Dafydd wants to pack a picnic and go for a real hike up and down some mountains. Can we?” Hannah asks. “And what about visiting Auntie Beryl?”

I pat her back. “That’s a great idea. In fact I’m feeling much, much better, sweetie.”

When I say I’d like to quickly visit my parents, they tell me they are just coming from there.

“He’s sleeping,” Hannah says. “And Mam’s going to rest, too. They had a long night.”

“His breathing is off,” Dafydd adds. “But he seemed in good spirits, before his nap. They showed us more photographs. Your father told us all about the village.”

“And lots about the disaster,” Hannah adds. “More stuff than you ever said. Like how many of your friends died and how you almost drowned in the sludge, too. So sad, Mommy.”

For a moment I am concerned Da has revealed to Hannah how Parry died. “Parry?” I ask.

“He told us about what a great artist Parry was,” Dafydd reassures me.

“Your mom fixed us tea and biscuits. She’s like you, Mommy. She thinks food will cure anything.”

Dafydd smiles and puts his arm around my shoulders. Turning a bit away from Hannah and moving closer to my ear, he says, “I understand why you had to leave.”

When we get back to the cottage, we find Evan napping on the sofa in the cowshed. He sits up, sleepily. “So do we have a plan?”

Packing a lunch together, we seem, in our own way, a family. There is already so much between us, a shared history, something we could all grow into.

We ring Beryl. “What? Your children are here? My goodness, Allie, did you expect them? No, of course you didn’t. My goodness, what you must all be experiencing! How wonderful for your da. And your mam. What am I saying? It’s wonderful for all of us! How soon will you come, will you be here?”

Our plan is to get to her around three p.m., when she will be back from market, which gives us time to make the long detour to Hay-on-Wye, a small medieval town on the English border. It is the long way round—two hours away from Auntie Beryl’s, but supposedly magnificent.

Along the narrow high-hedged lanes, I tell stories, point things out. We laugh a lot. From the backseat Hannah leans forward a bit, between Evan and me. She affectionately pets Evan on the arm as he is shifting gears. I watch her putting her reservations about him away—at least for the moment. Evan answers Dafydd’s and Hannah’s questions elaborately, throwing his own tales of valley life into the mix, until Hannah announces, “I have to pee.”

“ ‘Spend a penny,’ ” Evan quotes an old adage. “When I was growing up, Mam would give me a penny ‘just in case.’ The public loo cost a penny back then. Now it’s a bit more—ten pence, I think, maybe twenty by now.”

There’s not a public toilet in sight, so we stop at a viewpoint turnout—Hay Bluff—at the end of a single-track road. Sheep are scattered in with the view of a sweeping stretch of hilly, open land. Hannah thinks she sees ponies. I walk her to a clump of windblown trees leaning low. She crouches behind them while I stand in front waiting for her. In the distance I can see the steep slopes of the Black Mountains.

Hannah emerges triumphant and wanting lunch. “Why can’t we just eat here? I’m starved.”

Before I have a chance to answer, Dafydd and Evan come trudging toward us, Evan with the rucksack on his back.

Between the two of us, Evan and I have made the most delicious sandwiches: thinly sliced cheddar cheese, avocado and tomato on whole wheat bread; baked ham, Swiss cheese and honey mustard on baguettes. We have berries from the garden, chocolate bars from Evan’s stash and salt-and-vinegar crisps. Maybe Dafydd is right. I do think food will solve almost everything. Clearly Evan does, too.

After lunch we find the Book King, whose empire of books is stretched on bookshelves up and down the side of the main road for several hundred yards.

“Alys Davies,” the bookseller says. “Poetry, huh?” He motions for me to follow him to one of the back stalls. I can’t believe it, but
there, among works by Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Anne Sexton, Dylan Thomas and a hundred others, are two of my own books,
Under the Sycamores
and
Pressing for Time.
He asks, “Would you mind autographing them? I sold one a while back and probably could have gotten a good quid more if it had your signature in it.”

I write:

Wales will always inhabit the deepest valley of my heart

Corny, but true. I sign my name.

After the Book King, I take over the driving to Auntie Beryl’s while the others sleep. For the first time in a very long while, I feel content. In this moment, I am with everyone I need.

When we get to Beryl’s, Evan greets her with “Our gypsy mama.” She is waiting for us outside in front of her flower-strewn walkway. Evan picks her off her feet and hugs her.

“More like a gypsy grandmamma. My bones are aching today,” she complains, smiling.

Auntie Beryl is dressed in one of her bejeweled full skirts, frayed a bit at the hem. Braided and wrapped around her head is her signature scarf.

“This is Dafydd and Hannah,” he says, waving them over. Dafydd eagerly stretches out his hand. Hannah, more reserved, touches Beryl’s skirt.

Dafydd is amazed at the cottage’s low ceilings. “And I thought Evan’s doorways were low. This must be under five feet. My God, people must have been tiny in the old days.”

“Old days?” Auntie Beryl says, walking straight under the front door. “The Welsh aren’t a tall bunch, are we, Evan?”

“Speak for yourself, Beryl,” he teases, ducking to enter.

Beryl has fixed us a proper tea with small sandwiches. She has made Welsh cakes. “Which I am famous for all the way from Mt. Snowdon to Aberfan,” she tells Hannah. And next to the cakes, a bowl of fresh butter, another of clotted cream and a third of raspberry jam. The tea is hot and strong. My children and Evan dig in as if they haven’t eaten in weeks.

“I hope you and Hannah are giving your mother a real run for her money. When she was little she didn’t know the meaning of the word
no, and she was forever running off and hiding herself away, scaring her mam and da, not to mention her sweet gram. They’d be looking for her everywhere, they would.”

“What about Evan?” Hannah asks.

“I didn’t meet Evan till he was nearly seventeen, but as far as I can remember, he was nearly perfect. He is nearly perfect.” Beryl winks at me. “Although I don’t think his parents would agree. Times were different back then, sure enough, but rumor has it he ran away from home when he was about sixteen—didn’t you now, Evan? Wasn’t that ‘bout the time you started working down the mine?”

“You ran away from home?” Hannah’s eyes are wide. “Why?”

Evan looks at me, and I can almost hear his mind working. “Well, I… I wanted to be a miner. It seemed like a romantic way of life. And as it turned out, it was the only decent job available to someone who hadn’t yet taken their O-levels. I wasn’t near ready to take mine.”

“O-levels?” she asks. “What’s that?”

“Exams you take to graduate from high school. I didn’t take the exams, so I didn’t graduate.”

I’ve heard this partial invention. It’s the story he tells everybody.

“My parents had put their law to me. I couldn’t continue to live with them and go down the mine. They wouldn’t allow it, too much of a worry. Out of sight, out of worry for them. Or something like that.” He looks over at me again and I smile, reassuring him that the real story is safe with me.

Auntie Beryl puts her arms around me and says quietly in my ear, “How have you made out with your father?”

“It’s been good. Much more than I expected. You helped. Our talking helped.”

“And your mam?”

“There, too. Really fine.”

“I’m coming down tomorrow to see them both.”

Beryl tries to talk us into spending the night, but by early evening Hannah is complaining about a tummyache and sore throat and has found her way to my lap. She is a bit peaked. Her head is warm. She hangs on me, heavy and whiny, a sure sign she is coming down with something.

“Why don’t we start home?” Evan says quietly. “It’s probably better to be awake and at home than to intrude on Beryl.”

“Your house is not our house,” Hannah sasses. “He doesn’t make our rules, Mommy. I want to stay here. I’m tired.”

Evan just smiles and handles it. “What about the kitties? Who will feed the kitties if we don’t go tonight?”

She buries her head under my arm.

Back at Evan’s quite late, I tuck Hannah up, and surprisingly, she asks if Evan will sit with her for a while. I use the opportunity to sneak out into the meadow for a cigarette. Dafydd finds me.

“Why are you smoking?”

I shrug. “It’s just for now,” I say.

“You know, Mom, you seem happy here, with Evan. You get along so well. Why don’t you just stay a while?”

“It’s not that easy, Dafydd. I wish it were,” I say quietly.

Once again I choose to sleep with Evan, and I am in his arms when I awaken in the middle of a nightmare:

I switch the little night-light on.

“What’s going on?” Evan asks, turning over toward me.

“A nightmare.”

“Bad?” he asks, and yawns. “What can I do?” He looks at me then.

I am naked and suddenly shy. “I’m sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for. I can sleep with the light on if need be. Sometimes I think I could sleep standing up.”

“I mean, I’m sorry for leaving you,” I whisper. “I never stopped loving you.”

After a long moment Evan says, “I’m sorry for not going after you.”

He continues to stare at me. “You know, you’re more beautiful than you were as a teenager, if that’s possible.”

“Stop, Evan. You’re making me feel self-conscious.”

“I’m in love with you. Wow. Even in the middle of the night I’m in love with you,” he says, sounding surprised.

“This isn’t love—it’s obsession,” I tease back.

“You’re probably right,” he says, laughing. “But it’s also love, Alys.” He leans toward me and puts his arms around me. Soon his hands are caressing my breasts and he is kissing my neck. Before I know it we are rolling around on the bed and I am as fierce as he is in helping him find his way inside of me.

Afterward he says, “Now I suppose I should apologize?”

“For what?” I ask.

“For seducing you.”

“You never have to apologize for that.”

He turns the light out, and then, this time at my initiation, we are at it again, more slowly and gently. I am feeling him from the inside out. That scary dark place inside me is nowhere to be felt.

The next morning, before first light, Hannah comes into Evan’s bedroom.

“Mommy, I don’t feel well.” She stands by the bed while I gather my wits about me. Next to me, Evan awakens and pulls himself to a sitting position. We are both naked under the cozy.

“You’re actually sleeping with him?” she says. “That’s disgusting.”

Now I see she hasn’t understood what is going on between Evan
and me. Or, if she does on some level, the bald reality of it staring her in the face is quite different from what she has imagined. Leaning toward her, I put my lips to her forehead. She is burning up.

“Come on, sweetie.” I pull on a T-shirt as I herd her out of the room back toward the library and her bed.

“I don’t want to go back to that bed. I want to go home.”

“Does anything else hurt besides your throat?”

“Everything hurts. My throat feels like I swallowed a razor. My ears hurt, too. Mommy, why are you sleeping with him? I can’t believe it. It’s wrong. You’re still married to Daddy. I can’t believe this. What would Daddy say? How could you do this to Daddy? He would never do this to you!”

Little does she know.

Just as Hannah plops down on the library floor and starts to cry, Dafydd comes out of the guest room. Evan emerges from the bedroom, sweats on, pulling on a shirt.

“What’s going on?” Dafydd asks. His hair is sticking out and he is rubbing his eyes like a child.

“Hannah has fever.”

“She was sleeping with him, Dafydd,” Hannah says. “Mommy was sleeping with Evan. You’re only supposed to sleep with your husband.” Now she is sobbing. “It’s not fair. What would Daddy think?”

“Oh, Hannah honey,” I say.