A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [38]
“How much did he spend on that?” asked Ty.
“He said that wasn’t any of my business. I only know about the couch because I saw the salesman’s card on the kitchen table and I asked him about it. He was proud of himself!”
“We think it was sometime last week,” said Pete, “around the same time he bought the cabinets.”
I landed on Park Place, and pushed my B&O and Reading Railroad cards over to Rose. She handed me three thousand dollars. It was clear that I was losing this particular game, and I tried to decide whether to quit while I still had some money to add to my total score, but the conversation jangled me. A thousand dollars and more was a lot of money, but Rose seemed too mad even for that much money. On the other hand, Ty acted like he didn’t grasp that to spend money like this was a new departure for Daddy, not his routine “silly thing.”
Pammy came up to the table next to me, and I put my arm around her waist. She said, “Can I make some popcorn?”
I said, “Sure.”
She said, “Will you help me?” She knew one of the great family truths, that aunts always help, while moms always think it would be good for you if you did it yourself. Anyway, I was glad to get away from the others.
In the kitchen, she said, “Is Grandpa crazy?”
I said, “What do you think crazy means?”
“Yelling and screaming and acting weird. And going to a hospital.”
“Your mom’s just exaggerating. Grandpa has been doing some things that we don’t understand.”
She shook the pot carefully, eager, as always, to do a good job. She said, “Mom won’t let us go over there. And she told us not to open the door if he comes over when she isn’t there.”
“Well, that seems a little unnecessary to me, but she must have her reasons.” The popcorn finished popping and I held out the bowl. Pammy took off the lid and set it on one of the cool burners, then poured the popcorn into the bowl. She had always been Rose’s own daughter in the precision with which she went about things and her determination to do things right, but there was a difference—Rose always did things right as an assertion of herself. Pammy did things right so that she wouldn’t get into trouble. Linda, a year younger, was more carefree. I loved Pammy and was close to her. Linda, who was very pretty and graceful, I admired and delighted in from afar. I said, “Butter?”
Pammy nodded.
I said, “Does Grandpa scare you?”
“Sort of.”
“You should have seen what it was like when we were kids. We had all sorts of hiding places, but if he called our names, we had to answer within ten seconds. That’s just the way he is. Your mom isn’t afraid of him for a moment, though, so you just rely on her, okay?”
Pammy nodded, and we took the popcorn into the living room.
Rose was saying, “Maybe he has Alzheimer’s.”
Jess said, “Is he forgetful? That’s the first symptom of Alzheimer’s.”
“Just the opposite,” said Pete. “He remembers everything you ever said, every time you ever looked at him cross-eyed, every time you ever doubted some instruction he gave you. Is that a disease?”
“He could try to order us around with the farm work,” said Ty. “That’s what I was afraid would happen, but he stays out of the way, or else he asks whether there’s something he can do. If I say there is, then he does it.”
“But that doesn’t stop the complaints,” said Pete. “He’s full of complaints about what we do do.”
“Well,” said Ty, “I’d rather have that than constant interference. I don’t even listen to the complaints half the time.”
Rose said, “A thousand dollars! I still can’t believe the waste. And it just makes me sick to see them out in the weather. I mean, somebody built those! It’s actually sad somehow.”
I said, “I thought that, too.”
“He’s out of control,” said Rose.
I was tempted to agree.
13
THE NEXT DAY WAS ONLY the fifteenth of June, but it was hot, ninety-five and windy. Pammy and Linda wandered down to my house about ten—Rose had already sent them outside because she hated complaining. She was rather like our mother in the brisk way she treated them. I didn’t always approve; I suspected I would have been