A Thousand Acres_ A Novel - Jane Smiley [96]
I have to say that we all avoided each other these few days, though for me, the urge to keep to myself was accompanied by a strange longing, missing those I didn’t need to miss, avoiding those I missed. I didn’t even want to see Jess. Wednesday morning, the Fourth of July, another mild, crystalline day, I walked across the fields in the opposite direction from the dump that now represented Jess to me, toward Mel’s corner. I scouted around, looking for signs of the old pond, but I couldn’t even tell where it might have been—the rows of corn marched straight across black soil as uniform as asphalt. The pond, but also the house, the farm garden, the well, the foundations of the barn, all were obliterated. It was not as though this was mysterious to me—I remembered quite well the coming of the bulldozer, the knocking down and burning of the house and barn. It was a common enough event in the early sixties, when new, bigger tractors meant greater speed and a wider turning radius, fences coming down to create larger fields. The bulldozers were a sight I had glanced at from the window of my bedroom, before going back to doing my algebra or trying my hair in a bouffant style. Now, though, the hallmark of my new life was consternation at even this ancient bit of change. How many times had I walked this way in shorts and a T-shirt (Mommy didn’t think bathing suits were necessary just for swimming in the pond), heading confidently for a swim, knowing precisely where I was going and what pleasures were to come? But in the leafy rows of corn I did not find even the telltale dampness of an old pothole to orient myself.
27
BY THE TIME WE’D CHATTED casually to everyone else, we started to feel calmer ourselves. Or at least I did. Talking about Daddy as if these quirks would iron themselves out encouraged me to think that they would. Not talking to Rose or Pete or Ty very much allowed me to imagine that they were feeling about like I was, shocked by events, but able to cope. Clearly, Daddy needed some psychological help, had needed it for a long time, and Rose needed to confront him with her memories. Pete, too, would have to get in on this, and, of course, Ty would have to know and maybe the girls. I could readily imagine us after all of this confronting, after some set number of visits to a psychiatrist’s office (which I imagined to be just like the office of the chiropractor in Pike). I imagined a resumption of our old life, but with a different spirit, different subterranean currents—not so much anger and disquiet, more affection, or at least, acceptance, and peace. I wouldn’t think about Jess Clark any more, either.
I let myself, just twice, imagine a baby, a child who would turn all my miscarriages, and everything else, into good luck, whose birth, after the onset of self-knowledge (Daddy’s, mainly, but ours, too), was timed for happiness.
The psychiatrist would of course take our side, Rose’s side, that is. When we were all sitting in his sunny office, he would sit in the middle, between Daddy and us, and he would phrase our, Rose’s, accusations perfectly. They would flow smoothly around Daddy’s angers and defenses, dissolve the mortar joints like sugar, crumble the bricks themselves. There would be no yelling or threats, because the psychiatrist wouldn’t allow that. Maybe things would never be perfect, but was Harold Clark entirely wrong? Wasn’t what had been built worth some kind of