A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [70]
“I hate you because you’re the link between me and him.”
“Who?”
She threw up her hands in exasperation. “Daddy, of course. Don’t be so stupid. You’re such a good daughter, so slow to judge, it’s like stupidity. It drives me crazy.”
I smiled. “Just last night, I was thinking the exact same thing about Ty—”
She ignored me. “Every time I’ve made up my mind to do something—get off this place, leave Pete, go back to teaching just to earn the money—you stop me. When I was little, I mean really little, three or four, you were like this wall between me and him, but now you’re the path, you don’t keep him out, you show him the way in, every time you’re reasonable, every time you pause to wonder about his point of view. Every time you stop and think! I don’t want to stop and think!”
I stared at her. She pushed her hair back with her hand, then put her fist on her hip, defiant. Except that on the way down, her fingers fluttered over the vanished breast, the vanished muscles. She stared me back, then tossed her head and looked out the window. I said, “I’m not like him. I don’t always sympathize with him. But I can’t say I have any faith that he’s going to meet us halfway. I think it’s practical to try and work around him sometimes.”
It was funny how I wasn’t offended by her angry talk, how I thought it was okay, and even something of a relief for her to talk about hating me sometimes, but in a certain tone of voice, an embarrassed tone of voice. I’d thought Rose’s negative feelings would carry more conviction than that. Her embarrassment amounted to a reprieve. I stepped toward her, alive with the sense that I’d had the night before, that the tables could be turned on our father, that he could be taken in hand and controlled; we just had to agree on our plan and stick to it. She looked skeptical. I said, “Anyway, the point is, yes, you’re right, I’ve let him get away with a lot of stuff. We all have. But we can set rules, and I think the rules can be pretty simple.”
Rose walked to the front window and stood with her back to me, staring west across the fields. It was a picture of monochromatic greenness these days. The corn, which grows with mechanical uniformity that can seem a little surreal if you think about it, had put forth six or eight pennant-shaped leaves that floated in smooth jointless arcing opposite pairs, one above the other, and were large enough now to shade out most of the black soil of the field. Corn plants are oddly manlike—the leaves always reminded me of shoulders, the tassels of heads. I stood next to her and looked at her face. After a few moments, she looked back at me. She said, “Ginny, tell me what you really really think about Daddy.”
“Well, I don’t know.” Except that I did know. All sorts of thoughts had been crystal clear to me all night long, but now that she asked for them, their simultaneity made it impossible for me to choose one over the other and have it be the main thing I thought about Daddy. I licked my lips. Rose bit hers, I thought, then, to keep from saying anything that would influence me. I sorted, knowing she meant for me to answer. I was also aware of the crisp morning colors of what we were looking at, the shadow just in front of us, the green field and sunny blue sky beyond. I said, “I love Daddy. But he’s so in the habit of giving orders, no back talk. You know.”
She looked at me.
“I mean, he drinks and everything. I don’t know how that colors things.”
She continued to look at me.
“I’m willing to admit that he’s been drinking a long time, probably as long as we’ve known him. I haven’t really thought about it, but I’m sure if we sat down and worked it out—”
She kept looking at me. I said, “Rose, you’re making me nervous. What do you want me to say? I mean, the type of thing.”
She looked at me, then out the window. I said, “I mean, Mommy hasn’t been around to tell us what to think of Daddy. I wonder about whether they were happy. Whether she liked him. Or he liked her. Though everybody