A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [106]
The sheets fit smoothly over the single bed in the yellow bedroom. I folded back the top edge over the blanket, plumped the pillow. I thought that Jess would sleep there, and I lay down where he would be lying down. The dressing table was beside the window; the closet door was ajar; the yellow paint on the empty chest was peeling; some bronze circles floated in the mirror; a water spot had formed in the ceiling. Lying here, I knew that he had been in there to me, that my father had lain with me on that bed, that I had looked at the top of his head, at his balding spot in the brown grizzled hair, while feeling him suck my breasts. That was the only memory I could endure before I jumped out of the bed with a cry.
My whole body was shaking and moans flowed out of my mouth. The yellow of the room seemed to flash like a strobe light, in time to blood pounding in my head. It was a memory associated with the memory of my mother’s things going to the poor people of Mason City, with the sight of the church ladies in their cars with my mother’s dresses in the backseats, with the sight of Mary Livingstone’s face turned toward me with sober concern, asking me if I wanted to keep anything, and I said no. I lay down on the wooden flooring of the hallway because I felt as if I would faint and fall down the stairs.
Rose was supposed to meet me here at some point, and for a while I just said her name, “Rose, Rose, Rose,” hoping that I could materialize her at the top of the stairs in spite of the fact that no door had slammed, no voice had shouted for me. If she’d been there, I’d have insisted that accepting this knowledge, knowing it all the time, every day for the rest of my life, was simply beyond my strength. And certainly there was more to know. Behind that one image bulked others, mysterious bulging items in a dark sack, unseen as yet, but felt. I feared them. I feared how I would have to store them in my brain, plastic explosives or radioactive wastes that would mutate or even wipe out everything else in there. If Rose had been here, I would somehow have given these images to her to keep for me. She was not there.
So I screamed. I screamed in a way that I had never screamed before, full out, throat-wrenching, unafraid-of-making-a-fuss-and-drawing-attention-to-myself sorts of screams that I made myself concentrate on, becoming all mouth, all tongue, all vibration.
They did the trick. They wore me out, made me feel physical pain which brought me back to the present, that house, that floor, that moment. After a bit, I got up and brushed myself off. I had given myself a headache, so I went into the bathroom and took four aspirin. Rose never came. When I got back to my house, it was nearly nine o’clock. Only nine o’clock. My new life, yet another new life, had begun early in the day.
30
IN THE DAYS AFTER THE CHURCH SUPPER, I looked for Jess Clark to come by. There seemed to be a lot to talk about, but as it turned out, I only saw him twice. Even then, he was quiet and inaccessible. The candor of our earlier talks, which I longed for in spite of myself, had vanished. All he said was, “I’m surprised at how lost I feel”; “I can’t believe how sure I was that he’d changed”; and “I can’t think of anywhere to go now.” These three remarks went unelaborated upon. When I answered them, my responses hung between us—before I finished speaking, Jess was already preoccupied with his own thoughts again. His bearing changed, too. His former fluid grace, the acceptance of change and movement that ran through him, had stiffened. He held himself upright.
It hurt and embarrassed me to see him. I ventured awkward sympathy that failed to ease or soften his demeanor. I knew he was, as always, telling me the truth. He was lost.
I didn’t tell him about my revelation when I lay down on the very bed he was sleeping in every night, even though I couldn’t think of his sleeping in my old room without thinking of it. Nor, after all, had I told Rose, though I’d come close. For one thing, I’d been so certain that she was wrong—suspicious and dismissive