A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [42]
I looked up from the job I was doing, picking at the bark. I wasn’t quite sure I saw. From the outside it looked as if Lizzy had missed almost everything. She would never fall in love at sixteen, or read The Secret Garden, or smell violets again, or eat cotton candy, or fly for the first time on a bike.
“When I was done Albert said, and there were tears streaking down his face, he said, ‘I’m going to miss that girl.’ He never met her! He moved over next to me and we rocked together, back and forth, just hard enough so that one edge of the booth came up like a swing set will, you know, that isn’t grounded in cement?”
What I could see of her in the dusk, in the glow of her cigarette butt, startled me so much I choked on thin air. She was smiling at the sky, her mouth wide open in a fanatical grin, as if she were trying to beam all of her faith up to the dark, dry, invisible ether. She began to whisper, and I had to move closer to hear. “It was so strange, when I left him. I was driving way too fast. I knew that it was night, of course it was, but it was as if the highway, was—radiant. That’s the only word I know to describe it. It was radiant.”
For her sake I tried to picture a glowing highway, a ribbon of light all the way from Neenah to Prairie Center. “No one would believe me,” she said out loud. “I won’t ever tell anybody. I can’t tell Dan why I’m afraid to go on vacation. I’m afraid to leave, for fear she’ll come back and we won’t be home. What will she do if she finds we aren’t home?” She came closer yet, bringing her forearm across her cheek and mouth. “I just have to remember,” her voice trembling, “I have to remember the Holy Spirit. The anger, the regret, the fear—floats off like mist when I remember the presence, when I feel the warmth and the glow of the Holy Sp—”
“Where are you going?” I said. I had just realized that she’d mentioned something about leaving.
“Where are we going?” she repeated. “Ah, we thought Cape Cod at first, but then we decided it would be better to take the train out to Glacier and climb. Climb. Alpine meadows and marmots and snowcapped mountains.”
The gnats had found us, were flying at our faces, thick as snow. Theresa went into a frenzy, slapping her nose, her legs, her arms, her chest. “This is horrendous!” she shouted. “I’m going, these things are terrible. Audrey is doing the best of any of us. She skips all over the park shouting, ‘My sister’s in heaven, my sister’s in heaven!’ I bet she imagines heaven is like Disney World, with water slides and Coke and people dressed up as Big Bird and Minnie Mouse.”
She was running away from me, slapping at herself. It was almost like old times: Theresa rushing off home and talking halfway down the walk. She called, “Don’t ever tell Dan I smoked, okay?” And then she retraced her steps and came toward me, oblivious to the swarm around her. “Maybe heaven is whatever you want it to be,” she said. “For me it’s mothering, even the bad parts. I’m very clear about that now. For Lizzy it should be just about the whole nine yards except baths, and Mrs. Klinke’s German Shepherd. She’s gung ho about—about life. I keep telling her, ‘Hang in there, Lizzy. I’ll still be your mom when I’m eighty. I’ll remember everything, absolutely everything about you, and when I get there we’ll pick up where we left off.’ ”
Chapter Six
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SHE LEFT ME REELING in the orchard. She was quickly out of sight, on her way home to her quiet husband, or to the pond where, perhaps for her, the angels would sing. Maybe they were always there, but Theresa