Nightwoods - Charles Frazier [20]
On the happy side of things, they forgot bad emotions of their own almost immediately. Not that they came running to hug you around the knees shortly after some violent moment. Asking forgiveness, even by way of facial expression, was not a possibility. More like, they invested no feeling at all in what had happened and expected you to do the same. Let it go. No apologies. Repent was a lost word in their lexicon. They did what they did, and moved forward despite whatever trail of ashes they left behind. And Luce wondered if maybe that was what they had to teach her. No looking back. Life goes one way only, and whatever opinions you hold about the past have nothing to do with anything but your own damn weakness. Nothing changes what already happened. It will always have happened. You either let it break you down or you don’t.
A simple enough lesson, yet hard for Luce to learn. She couldn’t make her thoughts stop running back into the past, craving to be happy about something long gone, feeling sad or shameful for things she should have done differently. If the children came to harm under her care, she would not be able to let it go and move on. Not ever. Guilt would haunt her to her deathbed. It’s what she would be thinking about instead of teaspoons or moon phases or birds. Living life unfettered by the past would be splendid, but she couldn’t do it. She didn’t even really like the children, much less love them. But she loved Lily and would raise her children and not be trash. And her own parents came directly to mind at that point in her thinking.
Apart from Lola’s bitter slaps, benign neglect had been about the worst of it during Luce’s childhood. And that had its reimbursements. Mainly, limitless freedom, even at age five. Who wouldn’t wish for that at any age? Out roaming without anyone calling your name way on into moonlit evening, if that’s what you wanted. Maybe a hug or a tone of concern in a parental voice now and again would have been helpful, but on the other hand, Luce had never been laid into by an angry grown man when she was five or six.
Her parents were too busy with each other to pay much attention to her one way or the other. That was a few years before Lola disappeared, when her father had just returned from the war, back when most days involved empty Blue Ribbon cans and Wild Turkey bottles rolling on the living room floor and the radio too loud and her parents hollering at each other and sometimes snatching at each other’s persons under the influence of great conflicting emotions.
In short, Luce suffered few adult requirements against her until the State dictated that she must go to school. By then, she had been free-range for nearly seven years. The first day of first grade was not bad at all, a certain joy to be had in milling about confused with the other children as the buses emptied. Overseen by a stern tall lady teacher in flashing metal glasses and dressed all in brown with a sprig of violets on her lapel. In the morning, they sat at desks and drew pictures with fragrant new crayons and sang songs, a few of which Luce already knew from when her father came home late at night in a good mood. “Camptown Races” and “Buffalo Gals.” Dinner was some kind of soft grey breaded meat and mashed potatoes drenched in white gravy, with green beans that squeaked when you bit them. And all the yeast rolls and butter you could eat. Good food.
But for all that, even though Luce had sat in careful concentration all day to determine exactly