A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [32]
The day before, I had lain in the thicket for quite a while, until I realized that the light was fading, that once it was dark I might not be able to find my way out. I was walking along the road, halfway home, when Howard drove by. I hadn’t realized at first that he had passed me. He slowed down and pulled over to the shoulder. He sat looking at the dashboard while I crossed in front of him, shuffled around to the passenger side, and opened the door. I felt as if I’d been called to the principal. My heart was throbbing in my throat and I wanted to bury my face in my hands, to tell him, through my fingers and my sobs, that I hadn’t meant to, that it was a mistake. He waited for the click of my seat belt before he signaled. He drove leaning forward, his nose nearly against the windshield, as if he was worried he might run over an ant. I scratched and scratched at my ear, although it didn’t itch.
He parked next to Nellie’s Oldsmobile Achieva in the driveway. He took the key from the ignition and remained seated, staring at our beautiful white barn with the gleaming blue silo nestled into its side. “There were four grown men carrying Lizzy’s casket down the aisle,” he murmured, “when one would have done. When my father died it was sad, but nothing like this naked grief—”
I had blocked my ears, said I didn’t want to hear another word.
“That’s fine, Alice,” he said, turning to me, “but if you’re going to be dramatic you’re going to have to pay the—”
“Don’t you think I know what that old bitch, Mrs. Glevitch, is talking about right this minute?” I had shouted. “She’s telling everyone, ‘Alice Goodwin, the girl who—who drowned the baby—stepped on my brogans as she ran from the funeral. Alice Goodwin didn’t have the moral fiber to pay her final respects.’ Don’t you think I know?” I had screamed. I didn’t ordinarily raise my voice, but there was a thrill to the misery when it came at such a pitch.
“Okay, Alice,” Howard had said. “Calm down. Forget it now. Let’s go get into bed and forget it.”
I had looked at him, at his eyes that were too close together, as if they were snaps to hold his nose to his face. “Right,” I had said. “Forget it. Is that what I’m supposed to do, Howard?”
He had been ducking his head to get out of the car and hadn’t heard me. “What are brogans anyway? Alice, why do you let total strangers drive you batty? They don’t know you.”
But I knew better. What Mrs. Glevitch thought she knew was as potent as truth, and pretty soon would become truth. Word was out about me, and she would take the bits of information and dress them up with her distinctive brand of poetry. I was quite sure that Mrs. Glevitch would wave her wand, and behold, Alice Goodwin, rising out of Lizzy’s ashes, refashioned to fit the crime.
After we got home from the funeral I had run upstairs, to get away before Nellie appeared from around the corner. I waited in the hall as the guest-room door opened and her capable stride sounded through the living room into the kitchen.
“How was it?” Nellie had asked, after she fussed over the suit, praising its splendor: the colors, the textures, the weight, the classic cut, the fact that it could be worn in every season. Such a suit would never go out of style.
“The service, it was”—I could hear Howard letting his shoe drop from his hands to the kitchen floor—“a nightmare.”
“Oh, my land.”
There was a muffled silence. Howard was probably telling Nellie about my sudden departure from the receiving line.
“At the beginning,” I heard him say then, “the pianist played ‘The Requiem for a Dead Princess’. That did everybody in. Reverend Nabor stood at the pulpit trying to compose himself. Finally he said something like, ‘These are the times that try our faith.’ He said that he usually could find a few positive things to say in a funeral oration, but on this occasion it had been difficult to find the thread of goodness.”
“Dear God.”
“He spent the next twenty minutes trying to prove himself wrong. The glories of heaven, the mysterious ways of the Lord, the