A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [122]
“He was acting crazy!”
“But it was basically harmless. Just buying stuff. So what?”
“He had that accident.”
“So, we could have gotten him to come around more, but Jess Clark was coming around instead—”
“Don’t bring Jess Clark into this! Anyway, you said you had fun.”
“It was fun, but—oh shit. What’s the use?” He slid down under the sheet. “What time is it?”
“After eleven.”
“That lumber’s going to be here at six.”
I turned out the light.
In the dark he said, “If you wanted to get a job in town, you should have said so.”
I lay there for a long time, panting with relief and also with a strange disappointment that the truth hadn’t come out, distantly bemused that this was the conclusion he drew from the last five months, from Rose’s operation, from the transfer, from Jess Clark, and Rose’s revelations and my fresh memories. I said, “That wasn’t what I wanted.” Ty gave out a loud snore, then turned on his side.
When I was certain he was asleep, I slipped out of bed and pulled on a pair of shorts. My sneakers, which I tied on without socks, were beside the back door. In moments I was standing on the blacktop, looking toward Daddy’s house. For the moment, I couldn’t go any farther than that. The moonlight picked up the white hatches of the centerline and the glinting bits that looked like mica mixed with the asphalt. To either side, the corn plants rattled in the eternal breeze in a way that made you aware of how they grew—as tall as a man in a tiny fraction of a man’s lifetime, drawing water from deep in the earth and exhaling it in a vast, slow breath. I stared toward Daddy’s place. It was dark except for a light in the window of my old room. The big cube of a house seemed to expand and vibrate with the presence of Jess Clark.
Just because everything about him had turned shameful and awkward for me, that didn’t mean the thorn of longing had worked its way out of my flesh. So far, I had restrained myself fairly well, or, maybe, fear had restrained me—fear of being caught out by Ty or Daddy as well as fear of appearing forward or foolish to Jess. Or ugly. Or undesirable. Looking toward the light that surely contained Jess right then—perhaps he was reading?—I knew I was afraid of him, too. More afraid of him than of anyone. That had sprung up along with the shame, hadn’t it? Desire, shame, and fear. A freak, like a woman with three legs, but my freak, that I readily recognized from old days in high school and just after, when every date had the potential to paralyze me. The way I unparalyzed myself then was to break dates with boys who actually attracted me. The best thing about Ty had been that he attracted Daddy. I saw that he was clean and polite and familiar and good. Somehow that enabled the three-legged woman to walk, carefully, and very slowly, but with dignity.
Now the three-legged woman stood on the blacktop in the moonlight, and each of her legs strained in a different direction. Actually putting one foot in front of the other, carrying myself closer and closer to someone for whom I was soaked with desire, which was what I was doing, seemed like an illusion. Soon this illusion had me standing below the window, then circling, quietly, around to the back window of that room, where I saw what I had been looking for, Jess Clark, his back and the back of his head, in a white shirt, the slope of his shoulders and the angle of his neck as evocative and promising as anything I had ever seen. But distant and unreal, like a picture on a television screen, as unreal as the imaginary walking me that had left behind the actual motionless me on the blacktop. Now the imaginary me sang out, “Jess! Hey, Jess! Jess Clark!” Magically, the figure turned and came to the window, pushed the sash higher, and bent down. He said, “Hi! Who’s out there?”
“It’s, uh, Ginny.