Prodigal Summer - Barbara Kingsolver [126]
He really had intended to thank her for the pie.
{18}
Moth Love
In the summer after her husband’s death Lusa discovered lawn-mower therapy. The engine’s vibrations roaring through her body and its thunderous noise in her ears seemed to bully all human language from her head, chasing away the complexities of regret and recrimination. It was a blessing to ride over the grass for an hour or two as a speechless thing, floating through a universe of vibratory sensation. By accident, she had found her way to the mind-set of an insect.
Like so many tasks that had always been Cole’s, the mowing was something she’d initially dreaded taking on. For the first weeks postfuneral, Little and Big Rickie did it alternately without a word. But then the day came when she noticed that the yard was calf-deep in grass and dandelions. The world grows quickly impatient with grief, she observed, and that world seemed to think her chores were her own now. Lusa would have to put on her sunglasses and boots and go see if she could get the mower started.
At first she’d been dismayed by the steepness of the slopes and by how perilously the riding mower tilted toward creeks and ditches, but she’d concentrated on finding the Zen of a straight, even roadside or a spiral of tightening concentric circles in a yard. After her first few hours she realized she had stopped thinking altogether. She was just a body vibrating like one of Heaven’s harp strings in the sharp, green-scented air. The farmhouse was surrounded by acres of yard, side yard, and barnyard, not to mention a mile of shoulder on both sides of her road that she had to keep clear. In a summer as rainy as this one she could hardly afford to pass a dry day without spending some part of it on the mower.
So that was where she was on the morning Hannie-Mavis and Jewel drove up to drop off Crys before heading to Roanoke for another chemo. Not both Jewel’s kids, only Crystal. The plan was for Lois to pick up Lowell from T-ball and keep him overnight while his sister stayed here. Evidently Crys had used up all her other aunts: her last time at Lois and Rickie’s she’d had a fit, broken a porcelain praying-hands statue on purpose, and hidden out overnight in the barn. This was reported to Lusa along with the claim that Emaline’s new work schedule made her too tired to take the kids, and Mary Edna wouldn’t have the child in her house, period, until she quote-unquote straightened up and flew right. Lusa understood that they must be desperate to ask for her help; she didn’t know the first thing about taking care of a child like Crys. But at least she didn’t enforce a dress code.
She killed the mower engine as they pulled up, but the two women waved frantically and called out that they were running late for Jewel’s appointment. Crys got out of the back of the sedan, Hannie-Mavis reminded her to get her overnight bag, and Jewel yelled at her to be good, all in the same instant, and then they were off, sending gravel flying. Crys stared at Lusa with her eyes narrowed and her chin tucked down, like a guard dog on the brink of its decision. Lusa could only stare back at this sullen, long-legged urchin in her Oliver Twist haircut and high-water jeans. In her hand she clutched a small, white, squarish overnight case from another era—probably something her mother or aunts had used in their teens for happier sleepovers than this one. Here we are, Lusa thought, widow and orphan, at the mercy of a family that takes no prisoners.
“Hi,” Lusa said, trying not to sound too much like she was from Lexington. She would never get the long, flat i, though, not the way they said it around here.
“Hi-y,” the child mimicked, sure enough, eyeing Lusa with disdain.
Lusa licked her lips and thumped the steering wheel a couple of times with her thumbs. “You want me to show you your room? So you can unpack your bag?”
“’S got nothing in it. I just