Heaven Should Fall (9 page)

“That’s pretty neat.”

She smiled. The delicate metal hooks of her bridgework showed. “Bet you it’s the only one in Frasier. I thought it was a bathroom rug when he first gave it to me. Wonder what the Muslims would think of
that
, if I’d put it out for people to drip-dry on.”

I grinned back, and she rolled up the mat and put it away. “Cade seems excited about the baby coming,” she said. “He’s going to be a good daddy. You don’t know, Jill, what a lucky thing that is to see a man who cares about all that. Eddy, God bless him, he hardly paid our kids any mind until they were walking and talking. Cade’ll be different, I can tell.”

I nodded, thinking back to the night before, when Cade had rested his palm against one side of my belly and his ear against the other as if trying to pull the baby closer.
Sometimes I just wish I could hear its heartbeat
, he had said.
I know it’s there and all, but sometimes I just want to hear it
. I told him I wished I knew whether it was a girl or a boy, and he’d shaken his head.
I wouldn’t want to find out, even if I could. The anticipation is better than knowing.

“I was always terrified of being a single mom,” I admitted. “I didn’t want to have to struggle like my mother did. And if I couldn’t do as good a job, I knew I’d never be able to forgive myself.”

Her smile was tight as she peeled a label and smoothed it onto a finished package. “But that’s all mothering is. Whatever your own parents got wrong, you absolutely will not do, and whatever they got right, you’d darned well better get right, as well. That’s the disadvantage to those of us who had good mothers. We spend our whole lives trying to match them and can’t ever quite shake the feeling that we’re falling short.”

My voice was teasing. “Maybe it’s better to have a bad mother, then. Gives you higher self-esteem in the long run.”

“Maybe it’s better to know that your children love you regardless,” she said. “They don’t care how your mother was. They just want their own.”

I thought about that. During my first summer at Southridge, all the kids in the Alateen group had gathered around the campfire and told stories about their families. In the typical manner of girls my age I’d started to butt heads with my mother; her mere presence embarrassed me, her nagging about my room and my grades threw me into explosive tantrums and I looked forward to the chance to vent about my life at home. But I never got the chance, because the stories that made their way around the circle alarmed me into silence—tales of parents in denial, parents who couldn’t stay sober, or flew into rages, or passed out on the floor in puddles of their own bodily fluids. I understood then why my mother had sent me there, and my heart ached for the kids whose lives had become the collateral damage of their parents’ addictions. But it was true—they loved them even so. Admiration and love, I learned, are two entirely separate things.

“You’re going to be a good mother,” Leela said. “I can tell you’re a strong person. You’ve got the mama lion inside you. You haven’t seen her yet, but she’s there.”

Her praise warmed me. If she had been my own mother I would have rested my cheek against her arm as she worked beside me; but I knew she was Cade’s, not mine. “Hopefully nothing will happen to bring her out anytime soon,” I replied.

She laughed. “Oh, Jill,” she said, and her voice was rueful. “Peace never lasts long enough. That’s what’s true.”

Chapter 10

Leela

Sometimes during the day Candy will have that TV on, showing those court programs where people air out their dirty business in front of a judge. I don’t like to hear that stuff. Some things other folks just aren’t meant to know. Why I would ever care who’s the father of that baby or whether someone’s husband had a lady friend on the side, I can’t even imagine. You tell me what you want me to think about your circumstances, and I’ll take you at your word. It’s none of my business to go guessing at what you’ve got under the carpet.

My mother and father, they taught me not to stick my nose in the affairs of others, and thanks to that I never felt as though it was a lie to let folks go on believing their presumptions about me or my family. Even my own children never knew I had a husband before Eddy. It seems like a different person’s life now, that for four long years I had a different name and lived in a different state, sleeping in a bed every night with a man who was not Eddy. Of course it was so long ago now it doesn’t matter one bit. Children assume so many things that it isn’t hard to make an old life go away. At one point in each child’s life, when they realize what’s possible, they’ll look you in the eye and ask, “Did you ever have a boyfriend besides Daddy?” And you shake your head no, and just like that it’s gone. None of them ever asks again.

I’d been so lonely, living in Maine. The house Harold promised me had turned out to be a trailer, with secondhand curtains that didn’t hang right. These days I wouldn’t care too much, but a new bride is picky about those things and she has a right to be. She’s making up a home. As it was, all the women my own age, there at our church, had babies already. When they met up it was for coffee and to let the babies play, so they never thought to include me. And then finally I was expecting, and for a while they included me some. I was embarrassed about my house, so I didn’t invite people over too much. That was a mistake, I suppose. It made me look inhospitable, but I didn’t realize that in time. I should have just bought some real curtains.

But then, before I got any chance to get to know anyone real well or fix the place up any better, the baby—my daughter Eve—was gone. After that I went back home to my mother and father, because I couldn’t take living among those women and their babies, nor with a man who thought we could replace Eve like buying a new dog. I couldn’t just come back to that trailer, pack up the baby things and get to work decorating as if a new rug and some wallpaper would ever cheer the place up. It was like that life had gone sour in the refrigerator, and there was no choice but to throw it out.

For years I hardly thought about all that. I’d cast it off, and it went away like it was supposed to. But then, once Candy got so concerned with her religion, started passing comments about true marriage and God’s plan for families, I felt the sour taste of my departure in my mouth again. I knew that if she really knew me—my own daughter—she would think I was a sinful person. I wanted to say to her, life isn’t so simple as all that. If ever there was someone who understands how hard it is some days to be a family, it’s the Lord. I kept quiet in spite of Candy’s ramblings, and I knew that in this life I’d poured all I had into the measure, and let the Lord fill up the rest of it with grace. That’s the main thing with her—she’ll spout off with her God-talk about rules and regulations and forget everything about the mercy. The whole blood-flow system she’s got all mapped out, with no heart at the center.

But even though I didn’t need for my children to know about my first husband, or about their lost sister, having lived inside that loneliness for so long made me anxious for my children to have better than that. Candy I wasn’t so concerned about, because she had that hardness in her that, for all its worrisome qualities, made me sure no man would break her. And as Cade came into his own, I stopped fretting over that for him, too. He had a big heart, but if he had a falling-out with a friend or got a snub from a girl, he knew how to close himself off against further hurts from that person. He wasn’t like me, where I’d keep bleeding out the feelings like a wound that just won’t clot. Neither Cade nor Candy was the type who would ever just pack their things and abandon a life, the way I had. But when I left Harold, I hadn’t done it because it was the easy thing. It was just the only way I knew to stop the pain.

Elias, though. I confess that when he was little, his father and I worried that he was a soft boy. He was a sulker, the kind to go off kicking the dust to sit under a tree all alone, licking his wounds. Mostly people didn’t try to fight with him, because he was big and if he
did
get a notion to fight back, he’d have that person flat on the ground in one strike. But he couldn’t shrug things off, and he never did those peacock-y things boys do to get girls’ attention. For a while we worried whether he liked girls at all. His father made some noise about that, and as much as I shushed him I admit I fretted over it myself.

And then, not too long before he graduated high school, he started bringing home Piper Larsen from down the road. She came from a funny family—her mother and father were archaeologists or something of that nature, and they’d go away for months at a time to dig up old pottery and bones. The house she lived in belonged to her aunt and uncle, who farmed that land, and I suppose her folks found it convenient as their home base in between trips to wherever they ran off to. Well, it’s hard for me to trust people like that, but I was just so pleased to see Eli interested in a girl at all. He always had some excuse for bringing her around—that she wanted to see our new baby chicks, say, or to try the rhubarb pie I’d made because she’d never had rhubarb, or wanted to stay for supper because it was leftover night at her place. It was cute to see him trying to court her that way, and she was a pretty thing, too, like a foal: all bones, big eyes. She had pale, pale hair. My mother had always told me to make a wish when I saw a white horse, and every time I saw Piper walk in that door with Eli, I felt like making a wish on her. I couldn’t have picked a better choice for him, either. She was smart, grounded, good-hearted. Even though her people were from away, her family didn’t seem so bad, just a little odd. I couldn’t help but picture where it all might lead. And I confess, too, that since I’d set aside my imaginings about that sweet daughter who would sit beside me quilting, I started inventing new ones for how I would teach Piper to make a piecrust, or listen to her tell me some things about the strange places she’d visited. I hoped she would like me.

One night we had her over for supper and she helped me fix up the biscuits and a salad. Oh, she had the nicest manners, that girl, and a good, open way about her for learning new things. I showed her how you peel strips down the cucumber, then slice it lengthwise and scoop out the seeds with a spoon before you slice it in smaller pieces, and then you get pretty little half-moon slices with no seeds to bother with. She acted like I’d taught her something really special. She had a manner of touching your shoulder or arm in this affectionate way, like family almost. I was so fond of that girl, I couldn’t hardly contain it.

We all sat down to supper, and I’d made sure to put in the extra chair next to Elias, so he and Piper could sit right beside one another. Eddy and I sit at opposite ends of the table, so I made sure to put Piper’s seat closest to mine, because now and then Eddy gets off on some tirade during the meal and I didn’t want to risk the girl getting spooked.

Elias pulled out her chair for her, all gentlemanly. It made me smile. In all that time I’d never once seen him touch her, but that was just how he was. Elias wasn’t a hugger, but none of us were, really, except for Cade. Cade was fifteen then and I had to watch him like a hawk when he brought a girl over. First floor
only
, that was my rule. They could watch television or play a game or what have you, but there would be no going upstairs or, heaven help us, down cellar. At least upstairs I could have overheard if he had anything funny going on, but that cellar was so solid you could hold a party down there and, so long as you had the door shut, nobody would ever hear a thing. Plus Eddy’d stored up enough wool surplus blankets and army cots to tide us over through a nuclear blast, which was about how angry I’d be if I found out my son had gotten some town girl in trouble.

At first supper went fine, but then I got to noticing a strange feeling around my legs, like there was a mouse beneath the table or something. I felt my heart flutter a little—embarrassment was why—and real quietly I slid my foot forward to see if I could stir it up, to confirm whether we had some kind of rodent running around. And what do you know but my calf knocked right into Cade’s. At first I thought, now why in the world is his leg all sticking out under the table like that, and then I looked from him to Piper and I figured it out. He was stroking on her leg with his own, right across from his own brother. I didn’t have any idea right then if she was offended by that and just too polite to say anything, but the way things worked out later, I suppose she must not have minded.

After supper, as soon as Elias went to drive Piper home, I came up to Cade in his bedroom and asked him, “Now, what was the meaning of all that nonsense?”

He knew what I was talking about. Cade was never one to play dumb. “She’s not his girlfriend or anything. We’re both friends with her.”

“Let him be, Cade.” He was sitting cross-legged on his bed with a schoolbook open on his lap, that big old American flag pinned to the wall behind him, and looking at me with his defiant eyes. I remember thinking,
Son, Eli’s never going to have all that you do. Leave this town for him and you can have the rest of the world. Do him that one kindness
.

“It’s a free country,” Cade said. “Women have equal rights here. It isn’t like he won her at a farm auction.”

“Just give him a chance. That’s all I’m saying to you. Things aren’t as easy to him as they are to you.”

He laughed. “Piper isn’t easy,” he said, which wasn’t what I meant and he knew it. Then he said, “Whatever,” which was the thing he always said to put his foot down on a conversation. It could make me so mad when he said that, because you knew nothing was ever a
whatever
to Cade, no matter what he said. It just meant he didn’t want to listen to your part anymore.

It wasn’t too long after that when Piper started coming around with Cade instead. Elias didn’t react one way or another when he saw them, but I knew that way of being, too. On Eve’s birthday every year, nobody had ever looked at me and furrowed their brow and sensed something was wrong, or asked if I was feeling poorly. So I knew Eli might be dying inside and never show a soul. Or he might be all right and here I was just pushing my own feelings onto one of my children, like the kind of mother who can’t see the break between herself and her young ones, or admit that they might be better and stronger than she is. I just couldn’t tell which it was.

If I had it to do over again, I would have flat-out told Cade he wasn’t welcome to bring that girl home. For Eli’s sake I would turn on her the way Eddy turned on Randy, cast her out with all that prejudice, and take my punishment from God for my cruelty when it was time. I would never have made Eli look at all that, if I’d known for certain. But I didn’t, and the fact was, I didn’t want to lose my chance to have her as a daughter-in-law someday. I think that was in the back of my mind, that I just couldn’t quite let that girl go. Whatever Cade’s guilt is in everything that happened, it’s my guilt, too. It’s a sadness and a shame, the things loneliness can do to you.