A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [114]
“She makes me lunch on occasion,” I said.
“I’m glad! I’m very glad. I’ve been worrying that you’re going to starve. At least I can rest assured that you’re getting the major food groups now and then.”
I remember again feeling as if I’d been caught at something. Alice had wanted the girls to play with Audrey. I had thought all along that I was only doing her bidding. I must have known, as she talked about a recipe that Theresa had made with fifteen dollars worth of capers, that my afternoons in Vermont Acres had become increasingly important to me. If Alice had changed her mind, if she had said that the girls shouldn’t play there anymore, I would have stopped the routine with reluctance.
“I brought you these books on the legal system,” I said. “There’s one here about testifying in court. I think you should glance through them and see if there’s—”
“I want novels,” she said. “Rafferty will look after the rest.”
“You have confidence in him,” I stated.
“He’s great, isn’t he? How are we going to pay him? I have about two hundred dollars in my savings account. Don’t we have an IRA? No, we cashed that for the baler, didn’t we? What will Nellie say when you tell her that we have the best criminal lawyer in the universe? You’re only supposed to have the top dog if you’re guilty. What will Nellie say?” She started to make her voice go higher, “ ‘That Alice, always seeing the dark—’ ”
“I want to have you out,” I said, trying to be calm and honorable and sentimental, as always.
Her stretched, mocking face, the huge, open eyes, the elongated, pursed lips abruptly collapsed. She pinched the phone between her neck and her shoulder and hid behind her hands. “Howard,” she said, between her fingers, “I’m sorry I just said that about Nellie. I didn’t mean it. And I’m the one who insisted on Rafferty; I’m the one who said the stupid things to the nice investigating officers who I thought were Mrs. and Mr. Deputy Friendly.” She held the phone away from her and shook her head. She adjusted herself and sat straight. “You have every right to be furious, don’t you, and you’re just as steady as can be. I put so much stock in these visits, you can’t imagine.” If she’d been a different sort of person she might have begun to weep. “I’m living in my head, that’s all. You can’t guess what’s swirling around in here—a million things I never thought before. Seeing you is like being allowed to look up through a skylight to see the polestar. So I know where I am. I see you, and everything that’s charging through my brain falls like dust to the ground and settles, and I think, North, South, East, West. Howard. Howard.” When I didn’t say anything she took a deep breath and went on. “So, you’re getting fed. I just want these fifteen minutes to be the perfect visit. It’s like some date I’ve been looking forward to for weeks.” She smiled ruefully.
I always drove home from the jail shaken, not because my wife was in an awful stink of a hellhole where sunlight never penetrated, but because she was in a stink of a hellhole and surviving so admirably. I wasn’t sure what to do about that. She was spending her time reading Stendhal, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, Emily Dickinson, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Damon Runyon, P. D. James, J. D. Salinger, and who knows what else. I guess I had expected that she would continue on her downward spiral that had begun after Lizzy’s death. I wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d fallen apart, although I couldn’t have said exactly what that would entail. It had taken me a long time to understand that she needed help. It had finally registered one morning when I was trying to get her to notice Claire with a sharp knife in her hand. She hadn’t cared about the danger. She had turned around and gone upstairs to the bedroom. She’d kicked me in the jaw the night before, in bed, flown up from the sheets as if she’d been stung. I had known then that Alice needed professional help. That she was bearing the county jail now threw me for a loop. My wife had gone to jail and was as stoic as Mary, Queen of Scots. I was at home,