A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [88]
“I remember the shoe incident. I was remembering that when he was yelling at me, the way he made Mommy—”
“I don’t mean when we got strapped or spanked.”
“Came after us?”
“When we were teenagers. How he came into our rooms.”
I licked my lips and switched my legs so the right crossed over the left. I said, “We slept together while Mommy was sick.”
“And then, that Christmas, we moved into separate rooms. He said it was time we had separate rooms.”
It was true that we had had separate rooms. Mine had been yellow, our old room, and Rose’s pink, the former guest room. I did not, in fact, remember the transition, which was odd, nor did I remember exactly wanting my own room. I said, “Well, of course I remember having separate rooms. I don’t remember why.”
“He went into your room at night.”
“What for? I don’t remember that at all.”
“How can you not remember? You were fifteen years old!”
“I’m sure I was asleep. Grandpa Cook used to prowl around looking at everybody. It was like checking the hogs or something.”
“It wasn’t like checking the hogs with Daddy.”
“What are you saying, Rose?”
“You know.”
“I promise you I don’t know.” And I didn’t. But I was afraid anyway. I was a captive of her stare, staring back.
Rose inhaled, held her breath. Then she said, “He was having sex with you.”
“He was not!”
“I saw him go in! He stayed for a long time!”
“Times always seem longer in the middle of the night. He was probably closing windows or something.” My voice came out conciliatory.
“I checked my clock.” She looked flushed.
“Oh, Rose. How am I going to believe that you woke up twenty-one years ago and saw Daddy go into my room and checked your clock and then saw him come out and checked your clock, and that constitutes evidence that he was—” Still staring at her, I jumped over this part. I said, skeptically enough, I hoped, “Anyway, Daddy may be a drinker and even a rager, but he goes to church—”
“It’s true.” Now her voice was low, penetrating, demanding belief.
But I felt stumped as well as dismayed. Sometime later, I said, “Okay, say it’s true. Did I ever mention it at the time?”
“He threatened you. He made sure you wouldn’t tell me.”
“How? I told you everything.”
“He said if you told me, I’d be really jealous, and wouldn’t like you any more. You were fifteen. You didn’t have much spunk. You believed that.”
“I told you this at the time?”
“You never said anything at the time.”
“Well, then.” I sat back, breaking away from her gaze, trying to summon some older-sister authority. I said, to the room, because I was afraid to look at her just then, “Why are you saying this?”
“I realized that you don’t remember the other day, in Daddy’s living room.”
I caught my breath in a little surge of angry frustration. “But it didn’t happen.”
“But it did.”
“Well, why don’t I remember? Do you think I’m lying?”
“That’s the way it happened with me.” She might as well have been reciting a pickle recipe, her tone was that flat. I was certain I hadn’t heard her clearly.
“What?”
“Because after he stopped going in to you, he started coming in to me, and those are the things he said to me, and that’s what we did. We had sex in my bed.”
“You were thirteen!”
“And fourteen and fifteen and sixteen.”
“I don’t believe it!”
She looked at me from a long distance. “I thought you knew. I thought all these years you and I shared this knowledge, sort of underneath everything else. I thought if after that you could go along and treat him normally the way you do, then it was okay to just put it behind us.”
I stared at her. “What about Caroline?”
After a bit she said, “I’m not sure. I mean, he told me that if I went along with him, he wouldn’t get interested in her. He presented it as a kind of biological fact. I suspect he never tried anything with her, mostly because