A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [113]
After a quick bath I read to them, a short book. They rarely asked for more, or complained. I didn’t play my clarinet and they didn’t dance. They lay on Emma’s bed, waiting for me to go away before they shut their eyes. They had been sleeping together since Alice had gone. They wanted me to leave the room so that they could forget. They were smart to know that sleep would take them to another time.
My primary goal was to preserve our family, to make our home secure for the girls. Had it been possible I would have changed places with Alice. What made it tolerable for us to go along, week after week, was the fact that she was managing there. That fact continued to surprise me. She was usually cheerful and philosophical during our Sunday visits. Her skin had turned the color of old asphalt early on, but otherwise she seemed healthy. What took its toll, more than anything else, it seemed, was her need to say the right things, to make the visit go along happily.
“I’m alive,” she said at one meeting, several weeks into the ordeal. “Please don’t look at me as if you’re trying to figure out if I’m breathing.” She covered her nose and her mouth with her hands and then let them slip to her chin. She pulled her lower lip down so that I could see her pale gums and her crooked bottom teeth. “Are the girls all right?”
I had debated whether or not to tell her about the interviews once they were successfully concluded. I had thought I might write her. I didn’t know how to explain the episode simply on paper. It was afterward, I guess in relief, that I often considered asking Theresa if I could borrow her garage door for the purpose of smashing my old milk bottles. I couldn’t speak to Alice about the interviews in person with the time constraints and the continent of glass between us.
“They like going up to Theresa’s,” I said. “They—”
“There’s my cell mate,” she whispered, turning to look behind her. A large blond-haired girl with sores on her face passed behind Alice. “I keep hearing all these voices, sort of like your life flashing before you, only it’s on audio. What’s that sonnet—’They that have the power to hurt and will do none—’ ”
“What?” I said.
“It’s about how great you are if you don’t give in to the temptation to be cruel, how noble it is to be strong and at the same time gentle. You know, the perfect human being. I have this terrific urge to read poetry to my fellow inmates, but they’d probably sit on me and stuff up my mouth with wrapped vending-machine candy. I opened my eyes this morning, Howard, and looked, and it was exactly like the first day at Camp Everglade. I remember when I was nine, waking in the musty cabin and saying to myself, ‘I didn’t ask to be sent here.’ I said that out loud this morning. This is real, you know that? This makes everything else seem like some vaporous thing, some heavenly vision. But then I hear some of the sad stories and I feel like Virtue itself. All these crazy sayings keep going through my head, phrases like, ‘There but for the grace of God go I.’ I have never thought those words in my life. Theresa always used to say that. I wonder if she does anymore. How is she? Does she mind taking the girls? Is she feeding you?”
When I didn’t answer instantly she said, “You don’t have to look so sheepish. What, does she bring you down lunch boxes with a chilled can of soda in an insulated pouch, and salt in a little cardboard shaker for your hard-boiled egg? I can almost taste her fruit salad with kiwis and strawberries and a half-dozen other things that are out of season.” She had closed her eyes with the imagining, and when she opened them and looked at me she said, “She does! She brings you fruit salad! I can see it in your face! I bet you don’t ask her how much she’s spent