A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [76]
I sat down on a round stool in cubicle three, as I’d been told. I waited. It was probably power and mystery that made my nerves play, all of them, ringing in my ears like a brass band. The glass was smeared with hand prints, the palm marks of the children who have tried to melt themselves through the wall into their mother’s or father’s laps. She was going to come through the door on the other side. Perhaps she’d be too sick to speak. The man sitting in the next cubicle smelled of garlic and had such greasy skin and hair he sparkled. We avoided eye contact, staring straight ahead. We were ashamed, as if we were waiting for a peep show.
I remembered the time Alice and I went swimming the day we moved to Prairie Junction. We’d gone and had tuna sandwiches and pie at Del’s. When it got dark we went for a swim in our own pond, on our own farm. I had thought it would be fun to strip and swim together. I wanted to celebrate the occasion. After a few strokes she swam under until she was in the middle of the pond. She stayed there treading water. Her head was thrown back and she was barely moving. She acted as if she was alone. I climbed up onto the dock and dried off. I waited for her to come out of her trance. Finally she did the breaststroke in my direction. In the shallows she walked through the water dabbing at the surface. She was obviously having some private joke or thought. She never said what it was.
I sat waiting for her in the visiting area at the jail and I wondered if she would again be as far away as a person can go while they are still with you. She was going to be beyond reach. There would be nothing I could do to help her. It was like death, to be beyond reach. But of course it wasn’t death, this visit from someone as untouchable as a ghost. Her group came through in single file. She was third in line, wearing the orange shirt and pants that looked like they were made of burlap. The man next to me began shouting at his daughter for getting herself into trouble again. Alice was standing very straight, looking ahead like a soldier. The receiver was slippery in my hands. When she turned into the cubicle I said, “Visit means both to bless and afflict.”
Howard. I could see her lips moving as she reached for the phone, and then I heard her. “Howard. Two things. I know Nellie is in Yugoslavia. Would you please keep this to yourself? I don’t want you running to her this time, do you hear me?”
“She’s in Rumania,” I said.
“I know, I know. I couldn’t ever face her, or you, for that matter, if she had to pinch and save or pawn her jewels, sell her house, just to bail me out. I don’t know how to say it any more clearly. I couldn’t stand it. This is my deal and I’m not going to have her throwing her precious last dollars at it.”
The phone fell out of my hand. When I got it back to my ear she was saying, “I know it sounds ungrateful, but I don’t mean it to. It’s only that I couldn’t stand it. Number two, don’t do anything foolish like sell off parcels. You have to swear that you won’t do something rash like try to get zoning changes and sell off the old orchard. I know I’ve complained about the farm over the years, but I didn’t mean it, not really. I love that place. I’ve been having nightmares about your going to great lengths to get money so I can get out of here. I had this dream that you were like a kid with a lemonade stand out in the front yard, only you were selling off whole cows. I know you, Howard. I know you! I just don’t want you to do something we’ll both regret later.”
I had not seriously considered selling any part of the farm, I suppose because Rafferty had told me it was our greatest asset. It also was not something a person could dump onto the market expecting to make a quick fortune. “I want to have you out.” I had to yell to hear myself. The father was on one side of me, fuming and swearing. On the other side there was a teenage boy whose jeans were slashed up and down his legs. He was so excited he had