A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [130]
One thing Daddy took from me when he came to me in my room at night was the memory of my body.
I have only one memory of my teenaged body. I was fourteen, in ninth grade, and it was a Saturday night. I was going to bed. I sat down to take off my long underwear, and as I pushed the dimpled cotton down my right leg, I realized that my leg was slim and looked the way magazines said it was supposed to look. Recently, during physical education, Rita Benton had lamented her own legs, calling them tree trunks. I had noted her disappointment, but not related it to myself. Now I saw that I had had better luck than Rita—my leg was slim from heel to crotch. I pulled off the longjohns, put my legs under the covers thankfully. I promised never to be vain about them. I didn’t even look at the other leg; I looked away from it, and made myself concentrate on some math problems to put myself to sleep.
And so my father came to me and had intercourse with me in the middle of the night. I could remember pretending to be asleep, but knowing he was in the doorway and moving closer. I could remember him saying, “Quiet, now, girl. You don’t need to fight me.” I didn’t remember fighting him, ever, but in all circumstances he was ready to detect resistance, anyway. I remembered his weight, the feeling of his knee pressing between my legs, while I tried to make my legs heavy without seeming to defy him. I remembered that he wore night shirts that were pale in the dim light, and socks. I remembered that his hands were heavily callused, and snagged on the sheets. I remembered that he carried a lot of smells—whiskey, cigarette smoke, the sweeter and sourer smells of the farm work. I remembered, over and over again, what the top of his head looked like. But I never remembered penetration or pain, or even his hands on my body, and I never sorted out how many times there were. I remembered my strategy, which had been desperate limp inertia.
What I remembered of Daddy did not gel into a full figure, but always remained fragments of sound and smell and presence. That capacity Rose had, of remembering, knowing, judging, as if continually viewing our father through the cross hairs of a bombsight, was her special talent, and didn’t extend to me.
36
THE LAWYER IN MASON CITY, Jean Cartier, which most people pronounced “Carteer,” had a surprisingly deluxe office. It was in one of those minimalls, beige brick with white trim and tall, narrow windows, but inside it was paneled with real wood, not Masonite, and carpeted in thick green. What looked like a real Oriental rug lay under Mr. Cartier’s desk. Mr. Cartier, whom I never could call “Zhahn” or, as his secretary called him, “Gene,” had come from Montreal originally. He was married to a woman from Mason City. There was a picture of her and their four children in a silver frame on his desk. Ty had taken the papers to him and asked him to handle them for us. Late in July, he called and asked the four of us to come for a consultation.
Ty and I drove. Rose and Pete drove. The girls had been dropped at the Mason City public swimming pool.
We positioned ourselves around the cherrywood consulting table rather like guests at a club who are conspicuously not membership material. Mr. Cartier introduced himself to each of us individually, making eye contact and smiling gravely. He must have estimated our relative worth, because he then addressed Pete and me once for every three times he addressed Ty and Rose.
He asked lots of careful questions about the farm, Daddy, Ty’s and Pete’s farming methods, the construction, the loans, Marv Carson and Ken LaSalle, Caroline, and Frank, her husband. He explored the family rift in the deliberate way a surgeon might probe a wound, not poking or cutting, but holding one layer out of the way while inspecting deeper ones. He smiled often. He was orderly and each question only advanced a degree or two beyond the previous