A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [61]
I slathered the Fluff like Spackle over the bread and put a piece at each girls’ place. Without stopping to consider I went to the phone to call Dan and Theresa’s lawyer friend, Paul Rafferty. “No, I’m sorry, sir,” the secretary said, “he won’t be in until Thursday.”
“I—I think it’s an emergency,” I said.
“Well, let’s just transfer you to Mr. Finn for the moment. He’ll be out of his meeting within the hour. Where are you calling from, may I ask?” She had the saccharine voice and labored patience of a preschool teacher. “Let me see if I have it right,” she said, repeating our number.
“This will be her car!” Emma shouted, as I hung up. I half-believed her and I went to the window to look. My god has always been a laissez-faire deity, giving you the initial goods and sending you on to make your way. When Ayatollah Khomeni died I watched the hundreds of thousands of identical black-scarfed women grieving on television. I had never seen anything like it. It was their belief that was shocking. They carried it without thinking, like ants hauling bread. I didn’t know what else to do on that Tuesday morning except walk out and check the irrigation rig. The girls ate as they ran. As I lifted Claire into the spray and while she squealed I was pretty sure that what had happened only moments before was some kind of prank. There was no reason to worry. I had the idea that we would check the rig and then we would go and get Alice. I had wanted to topdress the west hayfield but I’d have to put it off until tomorrow. There had been a mistake, which she would explain at first with restraint. Over the summer, with subsequent tellings, the story would become more amusing. I guessed her tendency to exaggerate would be her right in a case like this one. The rig was so old and rusted it was practically useless. We weren’t to the barn when Alan, our driver who picks up the milk, hobbled down from his truck. He came forward grinning as usual. He thought I was going to listen to his jokes and schemes. That Tuesday morning I waved once and then walked as fast as I could with the girls back to the house.
We were slapping some more Marshmallow Fluff on the heels of the stale white loaf, to take with us in the car, when the phone rang. “This is my one call,” she said.
“What?” I went around the corner into the bathroom, as far as the cord would allow.
“This should teach me, Howard. Did you read the warrant? Robbie Mackessy says that I did unspeakable things to him. I said to the deputies in the car, I said, ‘Aren’t you sick of this kind of thing? Doesn’t it bore you to tears? Is it that we’re saturated with the notion of abuse, we can’t see anything else anymore? We are all nothing to each other but potential abusers—Is that it?’ They looked straight ahead and didn’t say a word. Remember that cable channel we got at your mother’s, that dial-a-fetish program? Maybe that’s what everybody else in the whole world is watching and thinking is normal. Remember there was that guy with the shoe, and the woman who—”
“Alice—” I broke in.
“I’m trying to keep my mouth shut, I am Howard, really. But in a way it’s so—typical. I have the urge to shake these people, to tell them to come off it. Last year a third-grader in Walworth was charged with fourth-degree abuse for pulling another boy’s pants down on the playground. He had to go to court, swear to ten years of therapy. I think about the time John Croger cornered me in the alley and felt my breasts—well, I was in sixth grade, that was the dark ages, nothing to be done about it. As horrible as it was I knew that it was just dumb boy stuff.”
“Alice!” I had to shout to make her stop. “Will you tell me what—”
“The town of Prairie Center is set against me, that’s what I know.” She lowered her voice. “Do you remember in the winter when I invited Sally