A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [171]
Let us say that each vanished person left me something, and that I feel my inheritance when I am reminded of one of them. When I am reminded of Jess, I think of the loop of poison we drank from, the water running down through the soil, into the drainage wells, into the lightless mysterious underground chemical sea, then being drawn up, cold and appetizing, from the drinking well into Rose’s faucet, my faucet. I am reminded of Jess when I drive in the country, and see the anhydrous trucks in the distance, or the herbicide incorporators, or the farmers plowing their fields in the fall, or hills that are ringed with black earth and crowned with soil so pale that the corn only stands in it, as in gravel, because there are no nutrients to draw from it. Jess left me the eyes to see that. I am reminded of Jess when I see one of my five children on the street, an eleven-year-old, a thirteen-year-old, a fifteen-year-old, a nineteen-year-old, a twenty-two-year-old. Jess left me some anger at that.
Anger itself reminds me of Rose, but so do most of the women I see on the street, who wear dresses she would have liked, ride children on their hips with the swaying grace that she had, raise their voices wishfully, knowingly, indignantly, ruefully, ironically, affectionately, candidly, and even wrongly. Rose left me a riddle I haven’t solved, of how we judge those who have hurt us when they have shown no remorse or even understanding.
Remorse reminds me of Daddy, who had none, at least none for me. My body reminds me of Daddy, too, of what it feels like to resist without seeming to resist, to absent yourself while seeming respectful and attentive. Waking in the dark reminds me of Daddy, cooking reminds me of Daddy, the whole wide expanse of the mid-continental sky, which is where we look for signs of trouble—that, too, reminds me of Daddy.
A certain type of man reminds me of Ty, and when I think of him I remember the ordered, hardworking world I used to live in, Ty’s good little planet.
And when I remember that world, I remember my dead young self, who left me something, too, which is her canning jar of poisoned sausage and the ability it confers, of remembering what you can’t imagine. I can’t say that I forgive my father, but now I can imagine what he probably chose never to remember—the goad of an unthinkable urge, pricking him, pressing him, wrapping him in an impenetrable fog of self that must have seemed, when he wandered around the house late at night after working and drinking, like the very darkness. This is the gleaming obsidian shard I safeguard above all the others.
New from
Jane Smiley
Private Life
A stunning novel from the Pulitzer Prize winner that traverses the intimate landscape of one woman’s life, from the 1880s to World War II. A portrait of marriage and the mysteries that endure even in lives lived side by side; a riveting historical panorama; an unforgettable story from one of our finest stortellers.
Available May 2010 in hardcover from Knopf
$26.95 • 320 pages • 978-1-4000-4060-5
Please visit www.aaknopf.com
ALSO BY JANE SMILEY
DUPLICATE KEYS
Alice Ellis is a Midwestern refugee living in Manhattan. Still recovering from a painful divorce, she depends on the companionship and camaraderie of a tightly knit circle of friends. At the center of this circle is a rock band struggling to navigate New York’s erratic music scene, and an apartment/practice space with approximately fifty key-holders. One day, Alice enters to find two of the band members shot dead. Then when she begins to notice things amiss in her own apartment, it occurs to her that she is not the only person with a key, and she may not get a chance to change the locks.