A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [121]
I suspect I knew then, lying in bed, that we could no longer wait, according to Rafferty’s instructions. It is difficult to pinpoint exactly when our lives began to unravel. In a snap I can trace the wrongdoing straight back to Alice. Like Theresa, I resist that temptation. I know it is not honest or fair to place all of the blame on my wife. That morning I did not get right up. I lay thinking that years from now if someone came across a chronicle of Alice’s life, the summer of Lizzy’s death would be the one period of time that stood out. She would be the great-great-grandmother who spent several months in jail. The ancestor who abused the boy. Future generations could blame their bad traits on her. It seemed cruel, that her afterlife was already determined. If I was noted it would be only in relation to Alice. Her husband. Perhaps being the faceless name next to the fleshed-out ignominious great-great-grandmother is an even crueler fate. I lay under the sheet, watching the morning pass. I knew how much energy it was going to take to catch up with the work. It was then that I first said to myself, I can’t do it.
I wasn’t surprised when Theresa didn’t come down on Saturday. It was late by the time I started chores. I was swabbing Maggie, an older cow who picked fights if she felt put upon, when Emma appeared in the aisle. The girls rarely came out in the morning and she startled me. “What do you want?” I said. I must have been speaking in accusing tones because Maggie turned to look at me.
“I didn’t do anything,” Emma whined. “Why aren’t you done yet, anyway?”
I stood slowly. My insides burned and ached as I inched to an upright posture. “Guess I’m tired,” I said.
“Where’s Theresa?” Claire called from the doorway.
“When is Mama coming home?” Emma said, tugging at my shirt. “I forget when you said she was coming back.” My daughters were still wearing their pajamas. Emma’s were so worn the print of the material was gone. You could see through to her skin. Alice might get convicted and spend years serving time. With all the skill Rafferty could muster he might not be able to fight the boy in his three-piece suit and the abused doll that had had to endure atrocity, real and imagined, in court case after court case. I had abstractly considered the possibility that Alice might not get out of prison for years. I had not yet thought about what we would actually do if she was to be held captive for the better part of our lives. I was confused so early in the morning by what had happened in the night. It came to me as I stared at Emma’s shabby pajamas, that I thought I knew Theresa and that my knowledge was based on a feeling, not anything more reliable than a blind man indelicately pressing on a face with both hands to get a sense of its form. I had thought at one time that I knew Alice, but that knowledge also had proved to amount to nothing. She probably knew me more than I wanted to be known. I felt very tired. I didn’t know if I had ever loved anything. I guess I couldn’t have said what it meant to love someone. We had a life together. Alice was my wife. Those things suggested an illusion and implied love. I have since wondered if a person can know how deep a thing goes without getting outside of it, without taking it apart, without, in fact, ruining it. I could have one night with Theresa, more tender than any Alice and I might have together, and still Alice would exert herself. My wife would slip away, I would lose her, but she would still have a hold. The certainty of those things made me feel sick. I leaned over, thinking I might vomit into the gutter.
I made my way down the aisle, going laboriously from cow to cow, the four milking units working at the