A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [138]
“So what if they hear me! I want them to hear me! He did fuck up. Not my life, but their lives. I want them to know I know it!”
“He’s dead!”
“So I should feel sorry for him? The way he died, I’m sure he didn’t know the difference.”
“I wish you wouldn’t—”
“Get obstreperous?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Shit.” But she said this good-humoredly.
She took another sip of her drink and stood up. I looked at her. She said, “Hey. Get up.”
“What?”
“Get up. Stand up.”
I stood up.
“Let’s move the couch out from the wall. Here, help me.” She was already pushing the coffee table out of the way. She pushed up the sleeves of her sweater. I said, “It’s awfully late for this, anyway, this is a good place for it. It’s the longest wall space. Otherwise it would have to go diag—”
“I don’t want to move it. I just want to push it away from the wall so I can get the vacuum cleaner hose back there.”
“It’s two o’clock in the morning!”
But there was no stopping her. We bent down and heaved the couch about a foot away from the wall. Rose got the Electrolux out of the hall closet and plugged it in. After she vacuumed behind the couch, we tilted it onto its back and she vacuumed dustballs off the underside. We pushed it back. Over the grinding roar of the vacuum cleaner, she yelled, “Let’s pull the stove out and I’ll clean behind there.”
We pulled the stove out. In fact, it was fairly clean behind there.
Rose made herself another drink. I poured a glass of orange juice. She said, “Let’s go out.”
“Out where?”
“Just outside. We can look at the stars or something.”
“What about Pammy?”
“I’ll check her. If she’s asleep, okay. If she’s awake, I’ll just tell her.”
Two minutes later we were standing in the middle of the county road. Rose was looking at the stars. I was looking at the left-hand window on the second floor of the big Sears Chelsea. Standing there brought that other time, the time when I told Jess Clark that I loved him, so vividly to mind that I felt my body go hot then cold with shame. I lifted my eyes to the stars. They were dim in the humidity, and they dimmed further while I watched them. I put my fingers to my eyelids. Tears.
“Ginny, you don’t know what it was like with Pete. He told me when I got back from the hospital that he preferred me to keep my nightgown on if he was in the room.”
I gazed at her. She pushed her hair out of her face, which had a tipsy, unbuttoned look.
She said, “It’s never been good. It was exciting once in a while, because Pete was so unpredictable, but—” She stopped, turned, and faced me. Her face was the color of the moon, and thin. Her eyes were in shadow. “All I wanted when I met Pete was someone exciting enough to erase Daddy. And I thought sure Pete would end up in Chicago, playing music, somewhere Daddy wouldn’t even visit. That was at the very beginning. But he wasn’t making any money at it. I mean, gigs were twenty-five bucks a night, or less. So then, we were going to move back here just until these friends of his got a record contract in L.A. and called us. That was supposed to take a summer, tops. One summer. But Pete had this fight with them, and we lost touch, and they put me on at the grammar school, and then I thought that was the way to make some money. We had a new plan every month, but Pete always screwed them up, with his temper, or else by being overenthusiastic and needy and driving people away. When Pammy was born and then Linda right afterward, I just gave up. But it was never good! It wasn’t ever even uneventful, the way it was with you and Ty!”
I knew if I kept my mouth shut, all questions would be answered soon enough.
Rose looked across the road and said, “I’m so tempted just to walk over there and go in, but I know Pammy will wake up.”
“Go where?”
She motioned at the big square facade of the Chelsea.
“What on earth for?”
She gave me a sideways glance.
My understanding, slower than my own reply, kept exact pace with hers, so that it felt like I was forming the words with my lips as she did. “To get in bed with Jess.” Then, “Oh, don’t look at me in that shocked way. I