World and Town (27 page)

“You’re saying you gave her your love and it wasn’t returned,” says Beth. “You’re saying you were—” Her face goes blank.

“Used,” he says, helpfully. “I was used.”

It’s drizzling out.
Mizzling
, Lee would say.

“Though maybe things just changed?” tries Greta. “Because things do change. Like didn’t she find Jesus? Isn’t that at least part of what happened?”

“And maybe she did love you,” agrees Hattie, supportively. “Maybe she loves you still.” She pauses. “I mean, I know it’s hard to tell.”

“She used me up,” he insists.

“Or maybe she didn’t love you but didn’t know that she didn’t?” says Greta.

“She knew,” he says. “She knew. But she was just obeying the will of God, see. Following orders. She was just following orders.”

It starts to shower. Hattie can feel the damp in her joints, and water is organizing itself into beadlets on Greta’s fleece jacket. Only Everett’s sweatshirt is getting soaked through, though, the water capping his shoulders and belly.

“That is just crazy!” says Beth. “That is just nuts!”

“It’s horrifying,” agrees Greta, quietly. Rain or no rain, she looks up, her eyes shining gray like the sky but with fine streaks of gold. “Horrifying.”

“I am just so sorry,” says Hattie.

They all walk on, their hands in their pockets, as if wet hands are a particular concern. Cars
shhush
past.

“I wasted my life,” says Everett.

“The whole thing?” Beth’s nose drips. “You can’t have wasted the whole thing.”

“Thirty-seven years anyway,” he says—water dripping off the bill of his hat, too. “So what would you call that—most of it? Could you say I wasted most of it?” His voice is calm enough.

Still, Hattie remembers how suddenly he went stomping off at Millie’s and is careful.

“That’s a long time,” she says. “And maybe you did waste your life—who knows. Because people do, it’s true. Make mistakes. Marry wrong.”

The downpour lets up as suddenly as it started; and out comes the sun then, like a strange, late guest—half pleats of light, half swords.

“See things too late,” Hattie goes on, squinting. “Waste their short time on earth. And who even cares, right? Who realizes?”

“Who gives a rat turd.” Everett shades his eyes. And he’s right—who’s ever going to know his heart? Or Hattie’s, either, for that matter? Mum—unlucky as she’s been in so many ways—is lucky in this one.

Sarun knows her heart. She doesn’t have to say anything. He knows her heart
.

Greta and Beth are quiet.

“Of course, you did raise those great kids,” says Hattie. Everett nods.

“But think Ginny’ll ever see?” she asks. “Think she’ll see how she kept you around when it was convenient but kicked you out when it wasn’t?”

Everett laughs a bleak laugh. “Cows’ll fly before she sees. But I want you to tell her anyway.”

“What she’s done.” He nods. “I want you to tell her.”

“You want her to see.”

He hesitates. “Cows’ll fly before she sees,” he says again.

“I’ll tell her anyway,” says Hattie. Remembering how she hesitated last time—
you’re hedging!
—but determined to do better this round.

“Much obliged, Hattie,” he says. “I’m much obliged.”

And that, it seems, is what he came for, because at the next corner, he disappears into the strange light.

H
e said he’s going to kill himself over you,” says Beth at the Come ’n’ Eat. “Or not over you. To get back at you. He said he’s going to kill himself to get back at you.”

Ginny works on her peach pie. She’s wearing a bright pink T-shirt and looks to have just had her hair done, but her face is tired and slack, and her ears, which she usually keeps covered up, are showing. She has big ears—Buddha ears.

“He said he spent his whole life loving you, and that if you weren’t going to love him back, you should’ve told him. Instead of keeping him around. Letting him waste his life. Or if not the whole thing, most of it.” Beth can bike sixty miles a day but confronting a friend is something else. Her voice trails off.

“He said you locked him out,” says Greta, taking over. Her back’s straight, and her head’s up; her braid falls like a cataract. “He said he’s living in a tent.”

“In a tent?” Grace’s eyes are so round with amazement, she looks almost bewildered or pained.

“He said you said the house was yours, even if he built it.” Hattie looks straight into Ginny’s green eyes. “He said you used him. Used him up.”

“Is that right.” There’s a white stripe across Ginny’s ring finger where her wedding band used to be.

“He said he gave his life to your marriage, and that if you were going to dump him at the end, you should’ve said so. That you shouldn’t have let him waste his whole life. We said that maybe you loved him, or that maybe things changed. Or that maybe you didn’t love him but didn’t know you didn’t love him.” Hattie tries to maintain a certain tone—not accusing Ginny of anything, but not groping like Beth, either. “But he said you said you did. You did know.”

“Well, maybe I did and maybe I didn’t.” Ginny sets her mug down, speaking calmly—adopting Hattie’s tone as if borrowing a cookie recipe. “But, you know, I was only doing the will of the Lord.”

“That’s what he said.”

“Then we agree. And if Everett had been with Jesus, he’d have known what there was to know himself, wouldn’t he? It’s been his choice, to remain in ignorance and darkness. It’s been his choice.” She leans forward and sighs. “He’s an obstinate man, that Everett. I know the Lord’s given him to me for a reason. I know he’s my trial. But honestly”—she bows her head—“that man’s made me suffer.”

“He’s made
you
suffer!” Greta bangs her cup down.

And Hattie almost laughs.
Hogwash!
But instead she says, “You wronged him and now you refuse to see how. You refuse to see
him
, you refuse to see that you don’t see”—trying to say what Everett wanted her to say, trying to remember what that was, though the trying’s tripping her up.
Hattie gone batty
just when she would
rise and fight again!
She is more frustrated than she’s been in a long time.

A sign of life, probably. Still, there’s Ginny draining down her cup. Pushing back her chair. Reaching for her walker.
For mine is the Power and the Glory
. She no longer looks tired as she puts a couple of worn-out dollar bills on the table; quite the contrary, she appears quite revived, giving a gay toodle-doo as she leaves, which several people can’t help but return out of habit.

“
He’s
made
her
suffer!” explodes Greta again, brandishing the end of her braid.

“And hasn’t it been his choice to remain in ignorance and darkness,” fumes Hattie. “Hasn’t he brought this all on himself.”

Grace sneezes. “Sometimes I don’t know about that church of hers,” she agrees, pulling out a shamrock-print handkerchief.

“You mean, why don’t they get up a mission to Africa, right? Or start an environmental ministry or something.” Candy rucks up her chin. “When, I mean, will you look at the earth.”

“That is just a fact,” declares Beth.

“Because they believe in salvation through faith,” honks Grace. “They don’t believe deeds matter.”

“But where Paul told us to spread the Good News, shouldn’t we do that whether we’re getting credit or not?” Candy’s red hair is shining. “And why do they keep to themselves the way they do?” She’s upset about a recent ecumenical powwow, which the pastor of the Heritage Bible Church refused to attend. “Opening up their own school as if everyone else has cooties. And people mix us evangelicals up with them—that’s what gets me! As if we’re all the same, because we don’t want our kids watching porn. Because we don’t want to see babies getting killed. Because we honor God’s plan and believe in the family. When, I mean, they are just fanatic!”

Silence.

“That is just a fact,” says Beth, finally.

Flora, all in green, appears with a coffeepot in each hand. Her flat, smooth nose is shining with sun and her earrings flicker, too—a little fish hanging in each lobe. Thanks, they all say. Caf. Decaf. Thanks.

Greta looks at Hattie. “Do I hear your friend the Cambodian girl’s involved with this church?”

“I don’t know the extent of it,” answers Hattie, slowly. “But this blue car does come to pick her up and bring her to some center.”

“You have got to stop that.” Beth jabs at the air with a toothpick. “You have got to nip that in the bud.”

Hattie nods.

“Maybe get her involved in something else?” says Greta.

A great suggestion, but when Hattie asks for ideas, only Candy has an action item for her, namely to pray on it. Because in her experience, she says, God can be a genius at this sort of thing.

T
he cell tower has somehow passed after all.

“How could anyone do this?” demands Hattie. “With all of town so against it? Who?”

But
it is just a fact
, as Beth would say. Jim Wright has not only gone and allowed an appeal of the cell tower case but, confoundingly, approved a permit. As long as he’s lived in town! explodes Greta. Owing as much as he does to his neighbors and teachers! Everyone who’s ever lent him a can of motor oil is irate. But, well, he’s taken his money, and two other zoning board members besides—both of whom have already skipped town with their families.

Good riddance! says everyone.

And when it turns out that plywood is being stolen from the cell tower building site, well, no one is exactly distraught. People don’t like it that crime is going up in general—new folks, they say. New folks bringing problems in their pockets. But in this case they just shrug. Someone building himself a deer camp, they joke. Cash ’n’ carry, only without the cash.

Now the plywood on site’s been stamped with the cell tower company’s name, and there are
NO TRESPASSING
signs posted, too. As for where the plywood’s gone to, though, who knows?

“Somebody must know,” insists Hattie.

Because in a town this size, people do generally know who’s behind things. And this is Riverlake, after all. A good town, a town that prides itself on having everyone in its picture.

But no one, in this case, has seen anything.

It rains so hard on the Fourth of July, the Pride of Riverlake doesn’t even march this year.

S
ophy pokes at her cheek with an eraser. “I wish they’d stop.”

“Of course you do,” says Hattie.

“I wish they’d kill each other already.”

“Oh—don’t say that.” Hattie pushes a plate of Russian teacakes toward her, and Sophy does take one. Instead of eating it, though, she nudges it from one spot on the table to another, like a chess piece. “Is your dad still hitting Sarun with newspaper?”

Sophy goes on nudging but nods.

“Then it isn’t likely to happen soon, thank goodness. It’s hard to kill someone with newspaper.”

Sophy looks up. “I guess that’s good.”

“Yes, it is,” agrees Hattie. “It is good.” She sees Joe, emaciated and yellow, his eyes stuck open and his chin fallen back; she hears Lee’s long, loud silence.

But no more thinking of these things. There’s a lesson to teach; and so, though it is
bă miào zhù zhăng
—like pulling at seedlings to make them grow—Hattie teaches. And at the end, has an idea.

“
Qĭng wèn,
” she says, as they put away their books. “I’ve seen you playing the guitar.”

“My old boyfriend gave it to me. I’m teaching myself.” Sophy looks proud of herself. “I have this book.”

“
Qĭng nĭ shūo Hànyŭ,
” says Hattie. “Do you remember how to say ‘I have a book’?”

“
Wó yŏu yī shū
. I mean,
Yí gè.
”

“
Yī bĕn.
”

“
Yī bĕn.
”

“Good. The whole sentence, please.”

Sophy rolls her eyes but says, “
Wó yŏu yī bĕn shū,
” and stands up.

“
Hén hăo
. Well, here’s my question, then”—is this impulsive? Never mind—“would you like guitar lessons? If I am able to arrange them?” It’s Hattie’s attempt to get Sophy
involved in something else
.

Sophy sits back down.

“I can’t promise,” Hattie warns.

But Sophy does not hear her. “Yes!” she blurts. “Yes! I’d love that! Yes! I would! Yes!” Her lips are parted and her eyes brimming; she looks as though she might cry.

“I can try but—really—I can’t promise,” Hattie warns her again—encouraged by Sophy’s response but
hedging
, as Everett would say. She has to.

Still, Sophy keeps exclaiming and when Annie comes to visit, throws the poor dog right up in the air. Annie’s face is as shocked as a dog’s face gets; Hattie laughs.

• • •

A
nd at yoga the next day, she ignores the way Carter circles Jill Jenkins. She ignores Jill’s tossing of her shiny black hair; she even ignores Jill’s backbend demonstration, though how truly remarkable that, with just the lightest support of Carter’s well-placed hand, Jill can still do a backward bend right straight into a bridge.
Well, if it ain’t a tendered loin!
Lee would say. But Hattie ignores even Lee.
Dá guān
—she simply watches, at headstand time, for Carter’s return to the world of the right-side-up. He is the last of the headstanders to come back; but here come his feet, finally, lightly touching down. One and then the other. And there—he’s levered his long body upright, moving with such grace that Hattie half forgets her mission for a moment: It is as if some invisible agency has judiciously supplied a bar, at just the right moment, at his hips. And here, now, he stands, before her—a barefoot man with a magenta-colored face. A zinnia.

He untucks his T-shirt.

“Guitar lessons? I am rusty as the Tin Man,” he begins—taken aback but relieved, too, she can see, to be having a normal-ish conversation with her. “Moreover, I am in danger of turning into a one-man rec center,” he says.

Still, come Saturday afternoon, Hattie is introducing Carter to the Chhungs. She doesn’t stick around. But from back in her house, she can see Carter produce his guitar with a flourish; Sophy, she can see, too, is already enthralled. The dogs need their teeth brushed; every shirt Hattie owns has a spot on it; and for once she has a clear idea what she’s going to focus on if she ever makes it back to her bamboo—a more natural splay of the leaves. Like the fingers of a hand, she thinks. She wants them to fall like the fingers of a hand.