A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [125]
On the way home, near the outskirts of Prairie Center, we saw something that you never see in small towns. There was an older man, squatting by the highway. He was too close to the road, on the gravel shoulder. He didn’t have anything on his head. Our corner of the state was a prosperous one. There weren’t homeless people or poor minorities. There weren’t rich minorities either. The guy was squinting into the sun. He was holding up a piece of cardboard that said, I Need Food.
We drove past him and went on home. The girls took a swim and I dunked in and out. I did the chores earlier than usual, and by seven-thirty Emma and Claire were in bed. Emma had been giving me the cold, silent treatment, as so many of her sex have done before her. After they were asleep I sat at the kitchen table to write a letter to Alice, to explain. I must already have known that I would try to sell the farm. Rafferty would be furious. He had often seemed to relish the fact that we had so much property, the one thing that should prove to the judge the quality of our citizenship. He used the words synonymously: upstanding, moral, hardworking, four hundred acres, sixty head of cattle. Our holdings were none of his business. Our life had come apart swiftly in June. We had waited through July and now into August. It had taken time to understand that the damage was irreparable. I knew that the girls couldn’t go to school at Blackwell Elementary. I knew that I couldn’t farm without a wife, that there wasn’t any point in farming without a family. I also couldn’t picture living down the road from Vermont Acres year after year. I’d have to sit in our living room reading the paper after lunch, knowing that up the way Theresa was singing in her kitchen.
“Dear Alice,” I finally wrote:
I think I’d be a good used car salesman. Maybe in the next life. I’ve lost all of what you used to imagine were my redeeming qualities. Emma called me a liar this afternoon. I am no longer calm or moderate, and despite the tone of this letter, I’m not nearly so sentimental. I am worried about you. I’m sorry about bringing the girls. It was a mistake. Claire and Emma have learned to cry like adults. They sit by themselves and cry without making much noise. We need you with us, for plenty of reasons, but not least to gently help the girls shake off a few years so they can again have a tantrum. What a relief that will be.
Howard.
That was the best I could do. It took me nearly two hours to write so little. When I was finished I went out to the mailbox and slipped the envelope in the long, silver insides. I wondered if the man was still out on the road. It was the simplicity of the sign that made it effective. I Need Food. When my time came what would my sign say, I wondered. I Need Work? Jokes? Family? Love? When I came back to the house I set the stones from the beach, one by one, in a glass pie plate. Those were our stones, to put up in the attic, our small, heavy pile for remembrance.
On Monday morning after chores I called Davis Realty in faraway Waukesha. I told the receptionist that I wanted to list the farm with them, that I would like to get the wheels turning as fast as possible. There were cicadas droning away in the trees, the first I’d noticed. They should have been singing for a couple of weeks. The whole place looked different. It looked like it didn’t belong to me anymore. Maybe the farm had slowly become unfamiliar, starting to change on the day Alice left, and by now, at this late date, it was finally unrecognizable. She had had a kind of fit that night before she was arrested—she had lost her mind while I made love to her. It was very probable she