A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [133]
I was a meticulous packer for Alice. I put like things with like things. I labeled each box on four sides. Most of the games and toys were missing several pieces. The cane in two of the four chairs my mother had given us had been stood on so much the seats were about to give out. The sifter’s handle was bent, the clocks didn’t work, the wooden blocks were covered with scribbling, the Magic Markers were dried up, the sofa was filthy, the wing chair was ripped, the stereo was missing half the knobs, the books had been gnawed on, by children, or mice. Our junk didn’t deserve my attention. I packed up the money box I had made out of oak for Emma on her fifth birthday. There was also a cherry-wood bowl I’d made for Claire when she was born. Emma might someday give her money box to her son or daughter. He would have no way of knowing what the box meant to Emma, but he might like it. It was a good box, well made, with compartments in it, for jewels, baseball cards, money, coins, dead animal specimens. It, a wooden box, might be the one good thing to survive me.
I hauled down the trunk from the attic. “We’re taking this,” I said to the girls. “It goes with us.” Inside were the farm relics: the stones, the lace, the books, the photographs.
“That trunk is old and ugly,” Emma said. She had inherited her mother’s habit of quickly judging a thing.
“It’s supposed to be,” I sniped. She recoiled. I didn’t look but I knew she was giving me the evil eye.
I wrote to Alice every day, short notes reiterating my need to have her out of jail. Those letters seemed honest enough. I had told her half-truths along the way. I’d said that I couldn’t find a baby-sitter, that Theresa needed family time. I mentioned that no one in town would serve us, speak to us, consider us among the living. Alice would have to understand that we couldn’t send Emma to Blackwell Elementary for kindergarten. I laid the groundwork. I would tell her about the sale as late as possible, and when I felt like it I’d inform Rafferty.
It took about two weeks for Theresa to come down again. I let myself think about her for short periods of time. I’d give myself an image, or the sound of her voice, and then let it go. I suppose I was fairly sure that she would weaken first. I could think about her, but taking the walk up to Vermont Acres, knocking on the door, was an impossible step. She came one afternoon when I was sitting on the floor looking over my old record albums by the boxed stereo. There was a rustle on the porch. I assumed it was the cats, trying to get in. I was reading the song titles on the Tea for the Tillerman album. I was expecting the appraiser from Mrs. Reesman’s bank. Before I could get up to see which it was, Mr. Phelps or Betty the tabby, Theresa appeared in the arch between the kitchen and the living room. I guess she’d done the wrong thing with her hair because it was bushy. It was big and awful. The girls were behind me, making beds for their dolls out of some of the smaller boxes. I didn’t leap to my feet. I sat holding the album. She didn’t look the way I remembered her.
“It’s true,” she said. She wasn’t out of breath. She wasn’t smiling.
“Theresa! Theresa!” Emma cried. “We’re playing hobos. My dad says we’re going to hop trains and eat rabbits raw.”
Theresa nodded, although I don’t think she heard Emma. She looked at me, and lowering her voice she said, “I’ve gotten a letter from her every day this week. She’s terrified you’re going to sell the farm. She mentioned the possibility to Rafferty and he blew his circuits.”
“She always knows,” I said.
Theresa put one foot in front of the other and came that much closer. “Even though Rafferty got an extension the trial is only two—two and a half months away. She’s dealing with it. God knows how I’m going to explain that I haven’t taken the girls. I haven’t even made an attempt—”
“I’m not going to explain,” I snapped.