A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [131]
“I know.”
“Nobody tells me anything anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Theresa hasn’t written to me for weeks. What’s that shit you said about her needing family time?” She hadn’t yet graced me with her all-knowing eyes. “She suddenly stops taking care of Emma and Claire? She said it was so good for them, she went on and on about the healing process. Why do the girls think that they can only go play up there on Sunday afternoons?”
I did not correct her assumption that Theresa was caring for them while I visited the jail. “I think it’s because of Dan,” I said. “He’s suffering over Lizzy.”
She nodded, as if what I had said fully explained Theresa’s change of heart.
“What’s happened to you, Alice?”
“When my hair grows out a little more I’m going to look like Laurie Anderson. I try to imagine, for fun, that I’m on the last frontier, that this is the kind of place you go to prove yourself. There’s got to be a little something here, a lesson, some kernel. At the very least I should feel that I’ve been on some existential Conradian journey into darkness. And you, having to cope with everything, the farm, the girls, the neighbors, while I’m learning some stupid moral—”
“What happened?” I asked again.
“I bumped my head,” she said. “I don’t know. I had a concussion and they even sent me to the hospital for a few days. It was a mess. I was really surprised they didn’t call you, or Rafferty, for that matter.”
“You bumped your head? That’s all?”
She looked up then, as if the question was rude. “Yeah,” she said. She laughed, not as if it were funny. It was derisive, that Ha ha.
“This is getting long, Alice. It’s going on too long.”
When I got back to the car Emma was holding Claire in place in her seat. She had her pinned down. Claire was unable to move or make a sound. She was crying so hard her mouth was wide open all the way down to her uvula.
“She wanted to get out,” Emma shouted. “I told her she couldn’t. She was going to get out.”
I yanked both of them by their collars and pulled them to the sidewalk.
“Where are we going?” Emma cried.
“Walk. Just walk. Walk!”
Emma ran ahead. When she was a safe distance she turned and called, “I don’t ever want to go back home with you!”
“That’s a good attitude,” I said. “You keep that attitude. You’ll need it.”
In the weeks that followed I got up early, as usual. I milked as quickly as I could. The cows were surprised by the way I slapped them around. They turned their heads to look back at me, their eyes wide, as if I was a stranger. I’d go into my study and make my list and then study my list, learn it. I went from one task to the next, no longer thinking about Robbie’s doll, or Alice’s bruise, or Theresa’s sweet voice. Although nothing was further from the truth I told myself that everything was pretty well settled. Right after Mrs. Reesman made her offer, I went to the grocery store outside of Racine and found boxes. I told the girls we were going to pack up everything and then pretend we were hobos, living in freight trains, eating out of tin cans, singing all the day long, sharing one towel, living the carefree traveling life.
“You mean we’ll make fires and roast wild animals and eat them with our bare hands?” Emma asked.
“Something like that.”
“Will Mom come with us?”
“Sure.”
“Yes!” she cried.
Of course the girls had no idea how desultory it would be when the hay wagons were piled high with wash tubs and boxes of nails, old mattresses, picture frames, the broken toys. I walked through the rooms hearing the auctioneer call, “Here’saprettylittlelampshade, takethewholewagonfiftyforadollar, whatthefuck, there’stheladywithsixtydollar—” We would leave with a few suitcases. I would take what I had: two pairs of jeans, three coveralls, a few shirts and sweatshirts, and a brand new suit which would serve us well in court.
There was not as much as I’d thought there’d be to disassembling the life we’d made. I must have had the idea that the job meant packing up the farm from its inception, over a hundred years before. I guess it seemed to me that I was dismantling