A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [112]
In the long, hot afternoons I dragged the irrigation rig to ever drier ground. The rig wasn’t working up to speed and still I worried that the well was going to run dry. The marsh that I had at first used as a water source was nothing now but a slick of mud. Normally there might be three or four feet of water. The pond was considerably lower than usual and I found several trout belly up, like old shoes, floating near the bank. I cultivated the soybeans and the orchard cornfield, the two crops I meant to save. The mullein and burdock had grown well without a drop of rain, crafty, strong, leeching from the soil what was not rightfully theirs. When I couldn’t stand the heat I went in and sat by the fan. I’d sift through the stack of books I had in the living room that were to make me reasonable and informed. Rafferty had given me a newsletter for Victims of Child Abuse Laws. VOCAL, it was called. He thought I might want to pursue a support network. I didn’t feel I had anything in common with the grandparents accused by their grandchildren, or the fathers charged by their daughters. Nothing in the literature explained how Robbie Mackessy could have looked at his doll with so much distress.
I called Rafferty nearly every day around four o’clock. I wanted to be sure he remembered that Alice was still in her cage, that I was still waiting out in the sun. “Any word?” I always asked. He had failed to get Alice’s bond reduced in a hearing at the beginning of July. In August he spent a good deal of time working toward a motion to suppress her admission at the trial. He was confident he would win the day because her rights hadn’t been read to her when she babbled on. That motion also failed. At the end of August he asked for an extension, which pushed the trial back another six weeks from the October 12 date. Later there was yet another extension.
I hadn’t talked with Dan much, since the drowning. At the funeral we had clasped hands without saying anything. I had gone up to Vermont Acres a couple of times in the days afterward. We had stood around kicking a stone in the driveway. We tried to talk as if his work at the Dairy Shrine was still interesting and useful. He didn’t come down to help me milk anymore, the way he had for nearly six years. In fact, I hadn’t seen him since he’d returned from his vacation. Theresa said he went to the office before dawn and didn’t come home until late. I wasn’t sure he knew my children were virtually living at his house.
I started the evening chores around five, as usual. I have always loved the steady rhythm of the milking machines, the milk surging into the pipes and along into the bulk tank. For what it’s worth, I could go through the routine on that farm, still, with my eyes closed. I moved slowly in the dripping heat. I knew that eventually I would have to go into the kitchen and find myself something to eat. Like clockwork Theresa brought the girls down at seven-thirty. She usually stayed long enough to explain that she had just thrown a few leftovers together, that it was nothing. There was always a brand-new brown lunch bag on the kitchen table. Inside there might be a roast beef or ham sandwich. There was liable also to be quite a few other things: an apple, a piece of pie, a plastic container of fruit salad, and a brownie. I was always startled, relieved, thankful, simultaneously. I tripped over myself, thanking her. She always ran away backwards, waving. I suppose a person likes being appreciated, but too much praise makes your ears ring. I probably should have felt like a schoolboy. Maybe I should have taken offense at her motherly attention. I didn’t. I was tired and hungry and her lunches were good.
After she’d gone, the girls and I halfheartedly whacked a baseball around. Sometimes they drew a picture for their mother, or had me read the day’s letter which she always wrote them. In her letters she asked them to remember the dramatic or funny or frightening times that were already a part of our family history. “Remember,” she wrote, “when we came