A Map of the World - Jane Hamilton [79]
On the way home I pulled over by the Washington Park Golf Course to watch the men in pastels buzzing around in their carts. My father had been an avid golfer and I sometimes watch the game, I guess for him. There used to be three effigy mound groups in that park along the Root River, from about A.D. 1000. One was in the shape of a panther that measured eighty feet in length. The mounded earth was landfilled years ago to make way for the golf course. It had been a disappointment to my father, that I hadn’t taken to golf. He hadn’t been able to believe that I’d played with a friend without keeping score, that we’d gone to the course because I liked to walk around outside.
When I turned into Miss Bowman’s drive the girls were sitting on the railroad ties at the foot of her crudely terraced garden. They weren’t fighting or talking or scratching in the dirt. Miss Bowman came out of her kitchen door. She watched us with her one good eye as I helped the girls into the car. “Thanks,” I called. “I really appreciate it.” She stood on her porch with her hands in her apron pockets. She was inert. I picked up a small sharp stone and I realized, just in time, that I was thinking of throwing it at her. I wanted to see if it would make her move or speak. A week before I would never have had the reflex to throw anything at anyone. “We’ll be by for eggs one of these days,” I said. “Thanks again.” I waved. “So long.” At the last minute I remembered that I was supposed to pay her. I got out of the car and ran up the stairs to the side entrance. She was stirring onions in a frying pan at the stove. When I opened the kitchen door she yapped and whipped around in alarm. “Here,” I said, setting the five dollars on the table. “Thanks so much.”
I gunned the old Ford and screeched out of the driveway. The Scottish terrier was going berserk at his post. “Well,” I said, once we’d turned the bend and the barking noise had died down, “What did you do?”
Emma was sitting in the back with her arms folded across her chest. “Nothing. She followed us everywhere! She’s stupid.”
“She’s stupid,” Claire mimicked. “She sings to herself.”
“You said you would bring Mom home.” Emma’s voice was husky. Now that I had actually seen Alice I knew I was accountable to the girls in a way that I hadn’t been before. We sat in the car in our driveway and I told them that their mother was in the county jail because sometimes people blame the wrong person for their own troubles. I’m not sure I sounded convincing. Emma blurted out that that wasn’t fair. Claire was still chronicling the oddities of Miss Bowman: She stored her potholders in the oven, the dogs drank out of the toilet bowl, she couldn’t even open one of her eyes.
“Shut up,” Emma said to Claire. “But how is she going to get out? How will she ever get out of jail?”
“She was eating crackers right in front of us!” Claire shouted.
Emma whooped her sister over the head with a book. “I said shut up, you idiot! How is she going to get out?”
I parked the car by the house and gathered up Claire. She was in shambles. We went inside where I tried to put her back together. It was a temporary fix. I then delivered a short lecture on the criminal justice system in our state. I explained that they couldn’t keep Alice for more than ninety days, three months, until the end of September. Emma, with either her innate understanding of manmade systems, or else her American instinct to throw money at a problem said, “Couldn’t we pay to get her out?”
“It will take a lot of money,” I said.
“Grammie will pay.”
“Yes, well, maybe she can help us.”
“What if she can’t? I’m not ever going to Miss Bowman’s again. Never. Who will take care of