Home Another Way (30 page)

In my six-year-old head, I called it the Jesus room. Grandmother had thirteen different Jesus figurines posed on the furniture—some ceramic, some glass, and one cheap plastic statue with the decals peeling off its face. I remember the day I counted them all, peering in from the hallway, toes on the seam between the plush wine-colored carpet and the scratched linoleum. One Jesus, on the end table closest to the door, wore a robin’s-egg-blue robe and held a lamb in the crook of his arm. The orange light from the table lamp glinted off his serene, milky face. I wondered if this was the same Jesus my grandmother always talked about, the one who could see me being naughty, who would send me to Hell for sneaking sugar cubes from the bowl or for saying I’d brushed my teeth when I’d only swirled a blob of toothpaste around my mouth and spit it in the sink. This Jesus looked so nice, and I wanted him with me, to protect me from the mean Jesus my grandmother knew.

I didn’t actually disobey. My feet never crossed the threshold of the parlor. I clung to the molding around the door and swung my body toward the table, willing my arm to grow, and knocked down Shepherd Jesus. He rolled to the edge of the lace doily, and I grabbed him before he fell off the table. Then I took him to my room and hid him under my pillow, sleeping with one hand curled around him.

She found out, of course. Three days later she clomped into my room and demanded to know what I had done with her statue. I pulled him out from beneath my Strawberry Shortcake pillowcase and held him gently in both hands.

“ ‘Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him,’ ” she said, and she meant,
Pull down your pants.

“I didn’t hurt him,” I said, crying as I unbuttoned my dungarees. “I just wanted to look at him some more.”

“You’ll look at him,” she said. She stood the figurine on the bed and bent me over so my face was inches from the shiny blue eyes. Then she paddled my bare backside with a yardstick, and the Jesus I thought looked so nice stared at me, painted pink lips smiling, and did nothing to help.

It’s because I’m bad,
I thought.
I’m too bad for him to
love me.

And I wanted that Jesus to love me. I wanted my grandmother to love me, too. On Grandparents’ Day at school, I saw the rosy-cheeked Mrs. Claus-like grandmothers, and the ostrich-legged grandmothers, and the clanky grandmothers with canes and oxygen tanks. They all hugged and kissed their granddaughters, and ruffled their grandsons’ hair, and carried Dentyne gum in their purses.

My grandmother didn’t come.

I set out to be the best granddaughter ever. For six years I tried to obey the first time I was asked to do something, tried to remember to say “Yes, ma’am” and “No, ma’am.” At lunchtime, I tucked my napkin in the collar of my blouse to keep peanut butter off it. Each night I ate all my soggy canned vegetables, even though Mary Ann Treaker had shared with me her parent-proof way of hiding them in her pocket, and flushing them down the toilet before bed. I flossed four times a day. I kept my church shoes polished. And I kept a flashlight hidden at the back of my closet, so I could read my Bible under the blankets at bedtime.

Nothing I did mattered. I couldn’t figure out why, until I was twelve and Aunt Ruth got sick of seeing me grovel like a mutt at my grandmother’s feet. She told me the truth about my father, my mother; I always believed they’d died in a car accident when I was a toddler.

Then I understood. How could my grandmother love me? Look who my parents were, what they did. From then on, I stopped trying to please anyone. It wouldn’t do one bit of good.

By the time I returned to the cabin, my entire body throbbed with the black-and-blueness of the past. I shivered, opened the woodstove. The ash lay crumbled in cold, achromatic mounds. I’d let the fire go out overnight, having only one thick wedge of log left to burn. I figured I would save it should the weather turn frigid once more; I wasn’t buying more wood for five lousy days. Now I tossed a couple of rolls of toilet paper into the stove, trying to take the chill from the air.

I began packing my things, stuffing my clean clothes into the duffel bag, the dirty clothes into a trash bag, moving with long, dogged strides. On liberation day, I’d only have to load the truck, stick my toothbrush in my back pocket, and drive away. I inventoried the kitchen cabinets: two cans of SpaghettiOs, a box of instant white rice, a package of ramen noodles, and five Hershey bars. I could live on that, having no plans to leave the cabin until my appointment at Rich the Mushroom’s office Friday morning.

I was done with this place.

Switching on the television, I went back into the kitchen for some chocolate and a soda. I heard a truck engine rumble, and I bent back the corner of the shade, hoping to see Jack parked in front of the cabin. And hoping not to see him there. An empty driveway stared back at me as the motor sound came again, louder, from the TV. A Toyota commercial.

I sprawled on the couch, my violin case poking my leg. I left it there, not enjoying the discomfort, but wanting to continue to feel it, focusing on it instead of the nagging disappointment that Jack hadn’t chased after me. He had no reason to come. And, even if he did, what would I say to him?
I’m sorry I tried to destroy your life? I only did it for spite, because I want you to love me, and you don’t?

But I didn’t love him either, did I? I wasn’t patient or kind, and I certainly didn’t want what was best for him.

If I had the inclination to pull out the Bible that Jack had given me and search through the tissue-paper pages until I found the love list sandwiched somewhere in the epistles, I was quite sure I’d have none of the required attributes. But, like Memory said, I’d never had anyone to teach me. That wasn’t my fault.

It was my father’s fault.

My violin case—no, Luke’s violin case—seemed to swell, growing sharp edges, digging into my leg. I pushed back against it, hard enough for the discomfort to become pain. Of all the instruments I could have chosen to play, I picked his. I looked like him. I probably smelled like him, baneful and sour.

My hate for my father had faded during the past several months, despite me. I had clung to it, but like handfuls of sand, the tighter I squeezed, the faster it had fallen away. Now it erupted as I counted my losses. Because of him, I never knew my mother, never fought with her over boyfriends, never made her a red felt valentine or a clay pinch pot for her birthday. He went off to prison, and dumped me with my grandmother.

He ruined me.

I shoved my hair behind my ears, grabbed the case by the handle and swung it into the closet, slamming the door as it bounced to the floor. Still cold, I boiled water and drank it hot enough to scald my tongue. Checked the stove. I saw the remnants of the cardboard toilet-paper tubes, black and chewed by fire. I hefted the log into my arms and, a knifelike pain shooting into my palm, dropped it again. “Sugar,” I said, stressing the
shhh,
enjoying the familiar sound on my tongue. A sliver protruded beneath my thumb. I pinched it out, sucked the wound.

I felt a small, subversive tickle as my eyes fell on the bookshelves, not only in a Guy Montag way, but because Luke loved his books, and I decided then to destroy a piece of him. I went to the cases on the right side of the front door and piled a half-dozen hardcovers in my arms. The corners poked my ribs. I stuffed them into the stove, stacking them one on another; the white pages grinned back at me before igniting.

I pulled another armload of books off the shelf, but the stove was still full, so I threw them across the room. They skidded over the wood floor. I grabbed more and more, slinging them over my shoulder, listening to them bounce off the couch, the coffee table, the walls, until I emptied the bookcase.

Sitting beside the open stove door, I made neat piles for later, for the remaining week.
The Collected Works of Alfred Lord
Tennyson
lay spread eagle, cover up, near my foot. I grabbed one corner; something fluttered to the floor. A newspaper clipping. I picked it up, and seeing a partial weather forecast from 1978 on the back of the paper, turned it over.

Petersen Pleads Guilty,
the headline read.

Three grainy black-and-white photos flanked the article. My father, looking grizzled and shell-shocked in his mug shot. My mother, Helena, her hair loose around her face, eyes crinkling with laughter. And, beneath her, a picture of Luke’s second victim, my mother’s lover.

Dr. Crandall White.

I drew a sharp breath, tied on my boots, thrust my arms into my coat and drove to Memory’s house. Doc’s Jeep wasn’t there. I looked in the front window and saw Robert’s bed—empty. So I went to Doc’s place and waited for him, sitting in my truck, reading and rereading the article as the sky clouded over and a cold drizzle pattered on my windshield.

I must have fallen asleep, because I woke, head kinked against my shoulder, startled by a tapping sound near my ear.

“Sarah.” Doc said, voice blurry through the glass.

I twisted my stiff neck. “Where have you been?”

“I went to get Robert settled in at Wildwood. What are you doing here?”

The clipping had slipped off my lap while I slept, into a shallow puddle under the gas pedal. I bent to retrieve it. The bottom part of the newsprint tore, the words smearing into one another. But the headline—and the photos—were clear. I pressed it against the window; it stuck there from the dampness, obscuring Doc’s face. I saw his breath fog around the edges of the paper, and he said, “You’d better come inside.”

He walked through the front door with his head down and heels dragging, hanging his jacket on the rack. He changed into his slippers, put on a sweater—the beginning strains of “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” played in my mind—and said, “Coat?”

“I’m keeping it on.”

He went into the living room and switched on a lone floor lamp in the corner. The room, full of heavy, dark furniture and Oriental rugs, seemed incompatible with Doc’s ideology, with Jonah itself. “And all this on a salary of magazines and pennies,” I said.

“My parents collected antiques.”

“They had money.”

“Yes,” he said. “It seemed a waste to let all this sit in storage.” Uncorking a decanter of Scotch that sat on the table beside a cushioned wing chair, he filled an ambertinted glass about a quarter full, and downed the alcohol in a single swallow. Then he poured another glass and plunked in several ice cubes. “Need a drink?”

“I need answers.”

“Answers.” He sighed, dropping into his chair like a stone falling into the river, heavy and lifeless.

When I looked at him now, I saw two faces blended into one, the photo of young, handsome Dr. Crandall White transposed over old Doc.

“I was there when you were born, you know,” he said. “Your mother, she was so hardheaded. Got it into her mind to take the train from Westchester to Manhattan when she was eight-and-a-half months pregnant. To go shopping, of all things. She ended up in my hospital.” He took off his glasses. “I delivered you.”

I sat down in a chair that matched his, this one pushed close to the fire, which smoldered stingily in the hearth. Reaching down, I threw in another log, sending embers tumbling onto the brick. “Tell me.”

“I met your parents in ’78. They’d just moved from upstate to Westchester because of Luke’s job. Helena was pregnant. They seemed happy, started coming to the church I also attended. It didn’t take long for your mother to decide it wasn’t right for me to be single, and she started playing matchmaker. Almost every Sunday, she invited me to dinner after church, and there was another pretty young woman to meet.

“I don’t know how it happened, but I fell in love with her. I didn’t realize it until I stood in that delivery room wishing Helena was mine, that you were mine. Then Luke showed up with his violin and played for you.” He sighed, a short, disgusted puff. “I stood there, a successful, rich doctor, jealous of a drywaller.

“I knew your parents were having some problems before you were born. Luke had gotten a promotion, was working a ton of hours and had stopped coming to church. After you were born, your mother just . . . faded away. I hardly saw her. And then, after about six months, I decided I couldn’t stand not seeing her. I bought some Chinese takeout and went to her house. She answered the door looking tired and thin, and beautiful. She didn’t want to be alone anymore, and neither did I.

“And that’s how it started between us.

“For five months I saw Helena almost every night. And you. Then she got tired of sneaking around. I asked her to come away with me, and she was going to take you and leave Luke. And that’s when he found us, that last day when she had everything packed and we were so excited that we were careless. Neither of us expected Luke to show up at home, and while we were waiting for you to wake up from your nap, we—” Doc chewed his ice. “Anyway, Luke walked in on us.

“I’ll never forget how he looked when he saw us together. Like a mother whose baby had been stillborn. And I just told him that I loved Helena, and he turned and left the room. Then we heard a gunshot.