Nathaniel (10 page)

“It’ll be all right,” Janet said.

Laura’s eyes met Janet’s. “If I could only remember what happened that night, what happened to Mother. I—I’m always so scared now, Janet. Every time Buck wants to make love, I’m afraid of getting pregnant. And then, when I do, all I can think of is that horrible night.” Suddenly her eyes narrowed. “Did—did Mark ever talk about it?”

Janet shook her head. “Never. Never so much as a word. And you mustn’t worry about it, Laura. There’s no reason why what happened to Anna should happen to you.”

“Isn’t there?” Laura whispered. She swallowed once, then spoke again. “Oh, Janet, I wish I could believe that. But I can’t.… I just can’t.”

Wordlessly, Janet took her sister-in-law’s hand in her own, and for a long moment the two young women sat silently, staring at the innocent-looking doors to the storm cellar, each of them wondering just what of Laura’s past had been hidden away in that dark room beneath the earth so many years ago.

Michael stood at the window of the smallest bedroom, his eyes fixed on Ben Findley’s barn. If he’d been asked to describe what was happening to him, he wouldn’t have been able to. But one thing he knew: he was home.

This house, this room, this view of the limitless prairie from the small dormer window, all of it felt familiar, all of it right. His father was here; he could almost feel his presence in the empty room.

And the barn. Old man Findley’s barn, clearly visible from this window. It was almost as if he could see into it, and yet he couldn’t, not really. Still, if he’d been asked what was inside that barn, he’d have been able to sketch it out: ten stalls, five on each side, facing each other, none of them occupied. Two of them, though, seemed to have been put together into some kind of workshop. Above the stalls, a hayloft, with a broken ladder its only means of access. At the back, a tack room, still filled with rotting leather, bridles and harnesses long ago stiffened and dried from lack of use and attention. And below the tack room, something else, something Michael could feel as he could feel the rest of the barn.

It was as if there were a presence there, calling out to him, whispering to him in a voice he could feel, but couldn’t quite hear.…

“Michael? Michael, are you all right?”

Startled, Michael turned. Standing in the doorway, looking at him oddly, were his mother and aunt.

“Didn’t you hear me?” he heard his mother say. He frowned.

“Hear what?”

“Hear me calling you. We’re ready to go.”

“But we just got here.” He saw his mother and aunt glance at each other.

“We’ve been here for an hour and a half,” his mother told him. “We called you, and when you didn’t answer, we thought you must have gone outside. I looked in the barn, the loft, even the tool shed.”

“Why?” Michael asked. His eyes drifted back toward the window, and Findley’s barn, but though he could still see it, he could no longer
feel
it. Then, as he heard his mother’s voice, tinged with anger now, he forced his attention back into the room where they stood.

“Because we couldn’t
find
you,” his mother was saying.

“I was right here,” Michael explained. Why was she mad at him? He hadn’t done anything. “I’ve been right here all the time.” And yet, even as he spoke the words, he wondered.
Had
he been there, or had he gone out, gone over to Mr. Findley’s barn? Suddenly he was no longer sure.

“Then why didn’t you answer me when I called you?”

“I—I didn’t hear you.” He felt a throbbing in his left temple. “I must have been daydreaming.”

“For an hour?” his mother asked.

“It hasn’t been that long—”

“It
has,”
Janet replied. She saw a flicker of what looked like fear in Michael’s eyes, and turned to Laura. “Why don’t you wait for us in the car? We’ll be right out.”

Nodding her understanding, Laura smiled encouragingly at Michael, then disappeared down the stairs.

“Are you mad at me?” Michael asked when he and his mother were alone.

“Well, it seems to me—” She stopped, her eyes narrowing slightly as she looked at him. “Michael,” she said, her voice gentle now. “Are you all right?”

The throbbing in his head faded away, and Michael nodded. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I was just daydreaming, I guess.” His eyes roamed over the room, and he smiled. “Can this be my room?” he asked.

“This room?” Janet asked. She looked around the tiny room, wondering why Michael would ask for it. Of the three bedrooms, it was the smallest. “I suppose so, if you want it.”

“I do,” Michael told her.

From his tone, Janet was sure that something had happened in that room, that it had affected Michael in some way. “But why?” she asked.

Because Daddy’s here
, Michael thought. He opened his mouth to voice the thought, but then changed his mind. Instead, he glanced around the room, and then, as before, his eyes were drawn to the window. “I like the view,” he said. Janet crossed the little room in four easy steps and stood in the dormer, her hands resting on Michael’s shoulders as she looked past him out over the prairie vista.

“It isn’t much different from the view from the other windows, is it?” she asked.

“It’s the barn,” Michael said quietly. “I like being able to look at the barn.”

“But you can’t even see the barn from here—” Janet began, and then stopped as she realized he wasn’t talking about their barn, but another barn, one she could see in the near distance. There was nothing special about the structure; indeed, if anything, it was remarkable only for its shabbiness.

“It looks like it’s going to fall down,” she commented.

Michael said nothing.

“Am I missing something?” Janet asked. “Do you see something about it that I don’t?”

Michael hesitated, then she felt him shrug under the touch of her hands. “I just like it,” he said at last.

“Well, then, I guess that’s that.”

Michael turned and faced her. “Then I can have it? This room?”

Janet nodded, the odd tension she had been feeling in the room, and in herself and Michael, suddenly evaporating. She smiled. “And it’s a good thing you wanted it. I was afraid I was going to have to fight you for the other big one.”

“I’d have lost,” Michael replied.

“But you’d have argued,” Janet observed.

Michael was silent for a few seconds, apparently thinking about it. Finally, he shook his head. “Maybe last week.” His voice was quiet, and Janet tensed, certain that he was about to say something she didn’t want to hear. “Last week, you’d have had Dad on your side, but now you don’t.” His dark blue eyes—Mark’s eyes—-held her own. “I’ll try not to fight with you anymore, Mom.”

“Fight?” Janet asked, feeling tears form in spite of herself. “We’ve never fought.”

Michael shifted uncomfortably, and his gaze broke away from hers. “You know what I mean. Arguing, trying to get around you. I—well, I’m not gonna do that anymore.”

Janet reached out to her son and took him in her arms, holding him tight.

“Thank you, Michael,” she whispered. “We’re going to be all right here, you and I I know it. I can just feel it.”

Then, as she felt Michael’s arms tighten around her, she glanced once more out the window toward the barn that had so captured her son’s attention.

There was a bleakness to it, deprivation and neglect that doused the spark of optimism she had just felt.

Janet hung up the phone, then moved pensively into the kitchen, where Anna, expertly maneuvering her chair with one hand, was sweeping the floor with the other. As Janet watched, Anna moved the pile of dust toward the open back door, then gave the chair a quick spin, catching the screen door with one of its handles and knocking it open. At the same time, a last whisk of the broom sent the accumulated dirt flying into the backyard. As the screen door slammed shut, she turned the chair back to face Janet. “It took me two months to learn how to do that,” she said in a voice that carried with it no emotion whatsoever.

Janet shook her head. “I wish you’d let me help—”

But Anna had already rolled across the kitchen to put the broom away. “I’ve been doing it for years.” She wheeled herself over to the table, and gestured for Janet to join her. “Well, is it all taken care of?”

Janet nodded. “I guess so, but I’m still not certain I’m doing the right thing.”

Anna shrugged. “It’s done, anyway, and believe me, it’s a lot easier to go along with Amos than to try to do it your way. Besides, I’m afraid he’s right—it doesn’t make any sense for you to go back to New York just to pack up. All you’d do is wear yourself out, and we don’t want you to do that, do we? Carrying a baby always has its risks, you know.”

Though there was nothing in Anna’s voice to indicate that she was thinking of her own last pregnancy, Janet decided to use her mother-in-law’s words as an opening. “Laura told me what happened,” she said, softly. When Anna made no response, she pressed a little harder. “The night Mark left—”

Suddenly understanding, Anna’s eyes hardened. “Laura had no right to burden you with that,” she said. “Besides, she doesn’t know the first thing about it. She was just a child.”

“But she wasn’t burdening me,” Janet protested. “She’s frightened. We were talking about you, and I asked her what happened. So she told me. At least she told me about you losing your baby, and Mark never coming home again.” Janet’s voice dropped slightly. “And she said that you never told her exactly what happened that night. I think she’s been terrified ever since. Terrified that the same thing might happen to her.”

Anna stared at Janet for a few seconds, then shook her head. “She shouldn’t worry,” she said at last. And then Anna’s voice took on the same tone of recitation Janet had heard from Laura. “All that happened to me was that I overworked myself and brought the labor on prematurely. It was a breech birth, and the cord wrapped around the baby’s neck.” She paused a moment, then: “That’s what they told me, and that’s what I believe,” she finished. The emphasis in her voice, though, only made Janet certain there was something Anna was leaving out, something she was not about to talk about. Indeed, she had already wheeled herself out of the kitchen to the foot of the stairs, and was now calling to her husband and grandson.

“You mean we’re not going back to New York
at all?”
Michael asked. He’d sat in silence while Janet had explained to him that she’d decided to arrange for movers to pack them and let an agent handle the subleasing of the apartment. Now he was on his feet, his eyes stormy, a vein throbbing angrily in his forehead.

“It just seems best—” Janet began, but Michael cut her off.

“Best for who?” he demanded. “What about my friends? Don’t I even get to say goodbye to them?”

“But you said goodbye when we came out here—”

“That was different!” Michael’s voice began to rise. “When we left, we were coming back!”

Amos rose and moved toward the angry boy. “Michael! Don’t talk to your mother in that tone of voice.”

With no hesitation, Michael swung around to face his grandfather. “Don’t tell me what to do,” he said. “You’re not my father!” Whirling around, his face contorted with fury, he stormed out of the dining room. Amos started to follow him, but Janet blocked his path.

“Let him go, Amos,” she pleaded. “He didn’t mean it. He’s just upset, and he’ll come back down to apologize.”

“He can’t talk that way,” Amos said, his voice firm but bearing no trace of anger. “He can’t talk that way to you, and he can’t talk that way to me. And he’d better understand that right now.” Moving around Janet, he, too, left the dining room. The two women watched each other warily, Janet knowing with all her instincts that Anna would back her husband up. But instead, the older woman seemed to sag in her chair.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I suppose I should have stopped him, but he believes children should be respectful, and even though I know that’s old-fashioned, that’s the way he is.”

And he’s right
.

The thought skittered through Janet’s mind, an alien idea long ago rejected by herself and her husband, and most of their friends. They were modern parents, ever-mindful of the tenderness of the young psyche, ever-striving to allow their son the same freedom of expression they themselves enjoyed. Mark, she knew, would not have reacted to Michael’s outburst as his father had. Mark would have taken the time to explain the situation to Michael, and listened to Michael’s point of view. And in the end he (and she) would have decided that the trauma of Michael having to leave his friends with no final goodbye outweighed the expense of that last trip to New York, even though logic dictated that they stay where they were.

But here, away from the city and its environment of advanced thinking and experimentation, the same thought kept drumming in Janet’s head:
Amos is right
.

These people did things as they had always done them, and if they seemed in some ways backward or reactionary, they had other qualities that made up for it. They had a sense of community, of caring, that refugees to the cities had lost. They retained values that people of Janet’s own environment had shed long ago and with no remorse.

There was a solidity to Amos, to all the people of Prairie Bend, that Janet was just beginning to realize she had missed in the years of her marriage.

She stood up and moved around to where Anna still sat, and rested one hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “Thank you so much for all you’re doing.”

Anna covered Janet’s hand with her own. “Don’t be silly, dear. You’re family. We’re only doing what any family would do. And it’s our pleasure. I lost Mark years ago, but at least now I have you and Michael.”

Though neither of them could see the other’s face, each of them realized the other was weeping, one for a lost son, the other for—

For what? Janet wondered.

If she’d been asked, which she was blessedly not, Janet would not have been able to say exactly why tears had come to her eyes. Partly for Mark, she supposed, though of that she was no longer sure, but partly for something else, something she was only beginning to discover. Mixed with her sense of loss, there was that something else, a sense of something recovered, a sense of values she had once held, but lost along the way, that were now being restored. She squeezed Anna’s shoulder gently, then, wanting to be alone with her thoughts, she slipped out into the fading evening light.