A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [125]
“Well, not to me.” His look was impenetrable. Then he said, “Can’t I reach you? I want to.” His tone and demeanor were warmly sympathetic here, and it occurred to me that in the past he would have suckered me, back when I would have readily called him my friend just because I would have been flattered by the public acknowledgment of such a friendship. Now the whole idea seemed suspect. I couldn’t tell whether I mistrusted his office or him, but either way, there would be no confidences. I set my coffee cup on the table, stood up, and went to the sink, where I wrung out the sponge under a stream of hot water. I began wiping the table. I said, “Lift your cup.”
He lifted his cup. “At least, keep coming to church on Sundays. Keep the avenue to God open. He’s marvelously forgiving. More forgiving than we are of ourselves.”
The screen door opened. Ty saw Henry, stepped inside, and greeted him respectfully. Here, I thought, were two people who agreed on so many things that their opinions automatically took on the appearance of reality. It was a small world they lived in, really, small, complete, and forever curving back to itself. Their voices relaxed and lowered, and their world looked far away to me.
That afternoon, when Ty left to haul a bunch of hogs to Mason City, I cleaned up from helping him load them, and went into Cabot. Henry’s reluctance to disclose the gossip had inflamed me. I figured I could tell what was being said about us by how they looked at me and spoke to me. I toyed with asking Rose to go along, too, for another, more observant set of eyes, but Rose had always scorned such pursuits, so even when she called and asked me what I was making for supper, I didn’t say I was going anywhere.
Cabot wasn’t much of a town, but it was on the only straight road between Mason City and Sioux City, so there were two antique stores and a clothing and fabric store along with the café, the hardware store, the Cool Spot, and the feed and seed. It was a nicer-looking town than Pike or Zebulon Center, either one. Those two towns had both once had hopes, or pretensions, so their main streets were four lanes and wider: old storefronts barely cast shadows a quarter of the way across the glaring expanses. Cabot, on the other hand, was built to the north of Cabot Street Road, and Main Street was lined with maple trees that Verlyn Stanley had donated when all the chestnuts were dying. Lawns in Cabot were big and houses were pretty—late Victorian, about twenty years older than the houses in Pike and Zebulon Center, but well kept up. Lots of farm couples aspired to retire there if it should come time to sell off the place on contract and move to town.
Old Cabot Antiques was where Rose had sold the hall tree she’d found in our dump, so that was where I went first. Dinah Drake set her prices high. She didn’t expect to be selling to people from town, and though you never saw anyone in there, it was rumored that she had contacts in the Twin Cities and Chicago who bought her best pieces. She had a friendly manner, and she liked to show off her new things. A discussion of whose they were always shaded into a discussion of how they’d fallen into her hands. Her habitual manner was one of amazement—that some right-minded Zebulon County person would actually let such a piece get away from the family, or else that some city person would actually pay what Dinah asked for it. Fools on both ends, and Dinah in the middle, tsk-tsk-tsking.
Dinah noticed me right away, and drawled, “Well, hi, Ginny. How are you?”
I gave the standard reply, “I don’t know. Not too bad, I suppose.” I started down her center aisle, but stopped almost at once to look at some figurines sitting on a marble-topped chest. I turned one over. Dinah said, “Royal Copenhagen. Can you believe it? Old, too. When I lock up at night, I put those away.”
The figure I was holding was a shepherdess in a gown rough with dainty china frills. Dinah seemed to expect me to say something, but I knew I would get farther if I kept quiet. I picked up a silver dish. She said, “That’s just