A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [130]
I was standing at the window just the way I had when the girls were running through the sprinkler that morning near the start, in June. Although now they were listless, sitting in front of the television, I could visualize them out in the yard, prancing around in their suits. “No,” I said to Sandy, “it will do. I can live with it.” I hung up. I announced, “Forty-three thousand minutes. We might actually be able to have Mom home in forty-three thousand minutes, Emma.”
“Good,” she said, without taking her eyes off the commercial. It was an advertisement for a doll that performed the bodily functions of a real baby.
I took amphetamines in college but that was nothing like the bug-eyed, empty-bellied rush I felt during those days when I systematically got rid of my farm. Soon after the offer was made, I called Dick Smelts, the local auctioneer. He was the only person in Prairie Center, besides Theresa, who spoke to me that summer. When I told him I wanted to have the sale in three weeks he said, “What’s your hurry? You can’t get it ready that fast.” I said I was sure I could. I’d sell the herd, the tractors, the milking equipment, the hen house, the watering tanks, the baler, the combine, the fencing, the odds and ends. Hordes of people, sensing desperation, would come from miles around for a bargain.
“That’s going to be tight, buddy,” he said.
“Everything’s tight,” I said.
There was only one person who might have understood my action. Theresa would take the sale personally and think I had overreacted. Rafferty was going to be livid. Dan didn’t seem to care about much of anything. But had Alice been an outsider, I think she would have understood. She was extreme herself. If I’d been in a fiction, the sale would have made sense to her. She must have understood how a thing can be spoiled. If it hadn’t been her property, she would see that my course, ditching the place, was reasonable.
On the Thursday after we had all visited Alice, Emma was sick with a sore throat and a rash. I ended up taking her to a doctor in Blackwell’s satellite clinic down in Silver Lake. She had scarlet fever. Claire was probably next in line. If I had made up the excuse of illness to avoid visiting Alice it would have seemed flimsy, but our reason had the fortitude of truth. I wrote to her immediately, explaining that the girls needed to be isolated for a few days, that I would see her the following week. It was good to have a reprieve. The girls weren’t uncomfortable once they got the antibiotic. They didn’t have to suffer too much to accommodate my need to stay away from the jail.
I would have liked to find a way not to visit the following week also. By that time Mrs. Reesman had made her offer. If I didn’t make the trip, Alice would know that something was awry. By the same token, if I did come she would be shrewd enough to see some change in my face. There was danger, and I guess the risk made me bold. It was a challenge, to keep her from knowing, to be self-possessed and sedate while my heart raged. I felt strapping and loud and fast and to conceal my secret I had to be quiet and slow and careful. I brazenly parked in the jail lot, in a space reserved for a police vehicle. I locked the girls in the car with candy and crafts, leaving a crack in the window for air. Emma had charge of my old-fashioned watch. “Twenty minutes,” I said to her. “When the hand gets to the four. This is the only way. The only way.” They were to stay in the car. They were not to roll down the window. They were to stay and keep still. They had learned that I was hard, that nothing would move me.
I thought Alice might not show up when it was her pod’s appointed time. I waited, watching the other inmates file past. She was the last one in line. She sidled up to her stool, slid on, and then picked up the phone. She didn’t so much as glance at me. Her bruise had turned a pale yellow-green. She was wearing the pink bandanna that made her look bald.
“I’m