Orchard (6 page)

Henry walked with her to a point midway between the house and the barn, but there he stopped. Did he know that this was where John collapsed? No, Sonja was sure she had told him no more than that John fell in the yard.

“I can’t,” Henry said. “Not tonight.”

“But you’ve already been in there. Feeding Buck. The chores.”

“That was different. I wasn’t . . . Look, we have people here. We can do this another time.”

“Go back, then. They are your family anyway.” Sonja knew she angered him with this remark, but when he turned and wordlessly walked back toward the house, she felt no inclination to go after him.

Although Henry and his friend Reuben Rosicky had brought electricity out to the barn two years earlier, Sonja did not turn on any lights. John had no doubt come there to touch, and only by denying herself the use of her eyes could Sonja take in through her hands, her fingertips, as much as her son did every day of his brief life.

She walked slowly forward, her hands held out in front of her. A barn cat, or one of its prey, made a scurrying sound in the straw. The pigeons that Sonja would have thought fell asleep hours before burbled high in the rafters. The heat had swirled all the barn’s smells into the single overpowering odor of rot, and breathing it in brought unbidden to Sonja’s mind the image of her son in his child-size coffin, her son at the mercy of decay’s inexorable powers. She rushed forward to frighten away such thoughts, and when she stopped she was standing next to Buck’s stall. She felt his warmth and heard his deep-lunged breathing. He snorted softly.

Perhaps if you stood in the barn next to Sonja House that night, perhaps if you stood so close to her that her lips were almost touching your ear, perhaps if you were that close and you also understood the Norwegian tongue, then you might have heard her whisper, “Horse, did you kill my baby boy?”

Sonja did not
want to go back in the house, not right away. The lights there were too bright, and after three days of tears her eyes felt like open wounds. The barn was too dark—its blackness seemed to have substance—but standing out in the yard was a comfort. The warm night asked nothing of her, neither sorrow nor soothing, and the crickets’ scraping made no attempt to question or console.

She began to count silently to herself, though she had no idea what number she would have to reach before reentering the house. Twentyfive, twenty-six . . . Just as this afternoon, seated in the hard pew, she had counted—one hundred, two hundred. . . . How high she had to go before the hymns and prayers and the young minister’s words words words would stop she couldn’t know. Three hundred twenty-five, twenty-six. He spoke about the impossibility of knowing God’s unknowable reasons and of the futility of even approaching God by way of reason: “God’s ways are mysterious and many.” How many, Sonja echoed, and counted higher. By then, she had stopped believing in God and instead believed in what she desired—silence, since it was silence that surrounded her son now and forever five hundred forty-one . . .

From the house came the sound of laughter, bass notes sung by Henry’s uncle Alvin, a man who could not remain somber any longer than a child. Sonja liked to hear him laugh, but she did not want to come too close for fear his joviality might be contagious.

She counted the squares and rectangles, the house’s windows and doors, three, four, five blank portals of light . . . and while she watched, one of the spaces filled. In an upstairs window a figure appeared, a child-size body in the exact place where John used to stand and watch for his father’s truck winding up the hill toward home.

That was June silhouetted in the upstairs window, and while Sonja stared up at her daughter another figure joined June. Henry had searched the house and found his daughter alone looking out at the night. He put his arm around her, and their separate bodies became one shadow.

They didn’t know Sonja was out there—they were simply standing together, each taking comfort in the nearness of the other—but to Sonja it seemed as if they had linked their bodies for strength, and thus joined they could block the way to anyone threatening their home.

Who might such an intruder be? Only Sonja stood outside.

12

Henry’s father taught him how to thin the fruit by hand, leaving at least twelve inches between each apple. This would mean fewer but larger apples—equal at harvest. Pluck the fruit
like this,
Henry’s father said, with thumb and two fingers,
like this, like this
. . . .

When his life fell in on itself after John’s death, Henry found, among his many difficulties, that he could not keep grief and love and work separate. The three fingers with which he pulled incipient apples from the boughs—
like this
—were the same fingers with which he teased Sonja’s nipples, and when he thought of the act of thinning fruit it came to him that when God took John He was thinning the House crop and when Henry thought of putting his hands on his wife—
like this, like this
—he held back because that would lead to Henry planting his seed deep enough in her to yield and that could result in heartbreak. Nonetheless, while Henry could force himself to pluck fruit from his trees, he could not make love to his wife, and to hide from her his lack of desire he tried to avoid touching her altogether.

However, six weeks to the day after John was placed in the earth and dirt packed around and over his small coffin, as Henry and Sonja lay in bed together, Sonja pulled her nightgown up to her neck and pressed her body against his.

While Henry pretended to sleep, Sonja ran her hand down his outstretched arm as if she were trying him on like a garment. In so doing, she increased the pressure of her breasts against his back.

He tried to mimic a sleeper’s regular breathing, but she must have known he was awake because she said softly, “There is nothing between us.”

Henry did not reply. How could he? Her words could have two sets of meanings, each the opposite of the other. She may have wanted to entice him into sex by pointing out that since nothing intervened between her flesh and his, why shouldn’t they complete the process—logical between man and wife—and become one? Or she may have been making a declaration, advising Henry that since they shared neither desire nor love there was no reason for him to turn her way. If she spoke the language like a native, perhaps then she would have inflected her sentence in a way to make her meaning clear.

Before long, she moved her body until it no longer touched Henry’s. A moment later, she raised and lowered herself quickly on the mattress; she was, he knew, pulling her nightgown back down.

Two days later,
Henry and Sonja were alone in the house. For the first time since her brother’s death, June had accepted an invitation to play with a friend.

Henry smoked and drank coffee while Sonja rinsed the plates, behavior that struck Henry as odd. She usually cleared everything before starting on the dishes, but there were the leftover boiled potatoes still on the table. Shouldn’t Sonja cover them, put them in the icebox, and tomorrow grate them and make potato pancakes for lunch?

She raised her voice to be heard over the running water, and then it was too late for Henry to escape—he had no choice but to finish his coffee and listen.

“My father had a friend—Thorvald Norstog—who wanted to make contracts over every little thing. If you borrowed a cup of sugar, Thorvald wanted to write a contract saying how and when it would be repaid. If he said he would help you repair your boat, Thorvald would write down the agreement saying exactly what work he would do.”

Henry lit another cigarette and waited for her to arrive at her point.

She shut off the water and turned to him, wiping her hands on her apron. “Would you like to make a contract between us?” she asked. “We would sign this and then we would be agreed: We will sleep in the same bed, eat under the same roof ”—she looked up as if to verify that the roof had not blown off since she began her speech—“but we will not put our hands on each other. Then you won’t have to pretend to be asleep when we lie together.”

Strange that she should mention sleep just at the moment when Henry felt he would rather put his head down on the table and try to sleep than have this conversation.

“People who love each other,” he said, “don’t draw up contracts like that.”

“People who love each other don’t need them.”

“Sonja, look—I just need a little time. It’s too soon after—”

“Too soon? Are you sure it’s not too late?”

“You’re angry,” he said. “What’s the point of anger? Do you think you can scold a man into . . . That’s not how a man works.”

“You want to talk to me about how a man works? A man does not even need love.”

Patches of color—raspberry interrupted with white—crept up her throat and settled in her cheeks. The irregular shape of those blotches reminded Henry of countries on a map; at moments like these she seemed so much a creature of a foreign land that he despaired of finding the means by which he could make himself understood to her.

“The time will come,” he said. “But right now I can’t.”

“You won’t.”

“No, I
can’t.
”

“You think I am asking something more of you. I want your touch. Nothing more.”

Henry stabbed out his cigarette, and the tin ashtray wobbled and spun on the tabletop. “I told you. Not just yet.”

Sonja crossed the room and stood next to Henry’s chair. While he watched, she unbuttoned two of the buttons on her housedress and pulled the dress and the strap of her brassiere off one shoulder, leaving the flesh bare and unmarked but for the narrow pink notch that the strap had made. She did this with such deliberation she could have been exposing her shoulder for a doctor who had asked to see the site of her pain.

She bent closer to him. “There,” she said. “I’ve done almost everything for you. All you have to do is lift your hand. Touch me and no more.”

Henry had to slide off his chair on the side away from Sonja; otherwise, he would have bumped into her when he stood and walked from the house.

Buck had not
been ridden for days, but he was not eager for exercise. Instead, when Henry saddled him the horse acted as though he were being unduly put upon. He kept looking back at Henry in inquiry:
It’s late in the
day—are you sure you want to do this?
When the bridle came over his head he sniffed hard for air. He worked his jaw as though he had never had a bit between his teeth, and when Henry tightened the cinch, Buck whoofed in protest. Nevertheless, once Henry took up the reins and swung into the saddle, Buck stepped smartly out of the barn.

For the next few hours, Henry rode through his family’s three orchards, starting with the one adjoining his place—he thought, each time he turned Buck down a new lane, that he might see Sonja walking out through the tall grass to meet him—and then moving on until at dusk he was among the apple trees farthest from his home. He patrolled the aisles listlessly. The only real job to be done at this time of year was thinning fruit, and Henry had performed that task until his fingers and heart cramped from the effort.

So there he was, astride the horse that might have killed his son, at the hour when the day was useless save for demonstrating the dark blue and emerald beauty with which a summer evening can softly descend. Henry clicked his tongue and wheeled Buck into a trot toward the lake, where the day’s light would linger longest.

Neither horse
nor rider had a destination in mind, yet they eventually found themselves on the narrow beach in front of Henry’s sister’s home. Henry was concentrating on helping Buck pick his way through the rocks when someone shouted Henry’s name.

The voice belonged to Russell Kaye, Henry’s brother-in-law, and he called out from the back porch overlooking the lake. “Henry? Is that you?”

Henry waved in acknowledgment.

“Henry? Where?” He heard his sister’s question, but before he could answer, a screen door slammed and then Phyllis was jogging across the lawn toward him.

“What are you doing out here?” Phyllis asked.

“Just out for a ride. Watching the sunset.”

She ducked under Buck’s head to look at the western sky. “You didn’t see much of one, did you?” A bank of thunderheads had slid in from the southwest and then stalled, obscuring the horizon precisely at the hour when it would have been most brilliant.

Henry shrugged. “It was enough.”

“Come on up to the house. Have a beer. Russell’s folks are here.”

“I should keep moving.”

“Oh, come on. Were you trying to sneak past us? It’s hard to miss a horse going by, you know.” Phyllis stroked Buck’s forehead, and he pushed his head in her direction in order to receive as much affection as she was willing to give.

“Sonja doesn’t know I’m here.”

“You can call her.”

Henry said nothing, and Phyllis quickly added, “I’ll call and tell her you’re here.”

Before he could offer further argument, Phyllis grabbed the reins and began to walk toward the house. Buck went along so willingly it seemed as though Henry’s horse and his sister had previously formed an alliance and a plan that was only now taking effect.

This tanned, slender woman leading him looked as though she might have been golfing that afternoon at the private country club to which she and Russell belonged. Indeed, the club could have used Henry’s sister’s smiling, stylish image on the cover of its brochure advertising the pleasures of membership. The country club, convertible, sailboat, and extravagant home on the lake all came Phyllis’s way through her marriage to Russell, and Russell’s wealth had showered down on him from that cloud of cigar smoke on the porch. Russell’s father, Bernard Kaye, owned a chain of Midwest grocery stores (O-Kaye Foods).

Phyllis led Henry and Buck behind the garage, and once Henry had dismounted, she quietly asked, “How are you?”

He knew what her question meant: Has grief loosened its grip at all? “I’m all right.”

“Why don’t you join the others?” Phyllis said. “I’ll call Sonja.”

Henry nodded and looped the reins around a drainpipe, even though he knew Buck would never wander off.

When Henry stepped
onto the open porch, Bernard Kaye didn’t rise—his massive girth made that too difficult—but he tilted forward in his Adirondack chair, removed his cigar from his mouth, and patted the vacant chair next to him. “Henry. Sit yourself down, son.”

Henry sat and said hello to Mrs. Kaye, seated primly at her husband’s side.

In front of Bernard Kaye rested a galvanized tub packed with ice and bristling with bottles of Pabst Blue Ribbon. He pulled a beer from the tub, wiped off the chips of ice clinging to the brown glass, and handed it to Henry. Then Bernard asked the question he asked every time he and Henry met. “How are those apples doing?”

Mr. Kaye did not carry apples from the House family’s orchards in the produce bins of any of the Kaye groceries, but he stocked House cider, and in the fall, Russell allowed Henry and Sonja to sell bushels of apples in the parking lot of Door County’s O-Kaye Foods.

“I expect we’ll have a decent crop,” Henry said.

“This heat don’t make trouble for you?”

“My father knew about the weather extremes we could have up here. He made sure we planted only the hardiest varieties.”

“He was a wise man.” Bernard raised his beer bottle to the memory of Henry’s father.

Phyllis returned, and when she walked past Henry she touched him lightly on the arm and said softly, “She knows you’re here.”

Henry guessed he was in Phyllis’s chair, but he made no move to rise. He was tired, and tired especially of being a husband and a father, those roles that had brought him so much confusion and heartache. He wished he could be a boy again, and perhaps in the bargain, the son of a man like Bernard Kaye whose fortune and influence made it possible for him to ease the lives of those close to him.

Phyllis leaned back against the porch rail. “How’s the apple thinning going?” she asked Henry.

“Done.”

“Why didn’t you say something? You know Russ and I would have helped.”

Henry waved away her offer. “You’ve got the store to mind.”

“Well, come fall,” Russell said, “you know we’ll be there with our baskets strapped on.”

Now it was Henry’s turn to raise his bottle in salute. “I thank you. But I’m thinking this fall I might hire that crew of Indians who pick over in Fairchild’s cherry orchards.”

Talk soon turned to the familiar and tired topic of the county’s need for tourists, yet its worry that too many outsiders would alter the beauty and character of the peninsula. Even carpetbaggers like Bernard Kaye could feel possessive and protective toward Door County. Henry had heard it all before, and he let his mind wander from the conversation.

A desultory rain began to fall, drops so widely spaced and random that no one felt the need to pull a chair back to shelter. It was in just such a rain that Henry had first seen Sonja. . . .

He and a group of his friends, newly reunited after the war, left the Three Arrows Bar late one evening. Drunk, they decided they wanted something to eat before calling it a night. They walked down the hill to Axel’s Norske Inn, only to find it closed. Under a streetlamp in front of the restaurant stood a tall young woman wearing the dirndl that Axel made all his female employees wear. By the way she kept glancing down the road, Henry guessed she was waiting for a ride. Henry’s friends moved on in their search for food, but Henry lingered, trying to think of a way to engage this woman in conversation.

Just then a few drops of rain began to fall, and she lifted her face to the night sky. Henry was standing close enough to see her flinch when a drop hit her upturned cheek. She looked away, blinking as if she were puzzled by what was happening.

Henry said, “What’s the matter—don’t they have rain where you come from?”

She turned to Henry as if he were as bewildering as the rain, and Henry, who seldom had trouble coming up with words to fling in the direction of an attractive woman, suddenly could think of nothing else to say. In fact, he found himself backing away, and he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps her foreignness made communication seem impossibly complicated to someone in his drunken state. Perhaps her rain-spattered beauty intimidated him.