A line of weak corn that I"d planted? The crows that fed off of it? Maybe something as simple as the earth itself. When you get back, I final y wrote, let"s lay ourselves down in the fields outside, and sleep there for the night, whatever the weather. We"ll let the crows roost on our shoulders and skulls, let them nudge our necks with their wings, and pick at our earlobes, nibbling all the rotten bits out of us until we"re nothing more than sinew, bone, and teeth. Until we"re so pure, you can see right through us down to the roots and dirt. Until even our memories are eaten alive.
I licked the envelope and sent it, but maybe I said too much, for I never got a reply, and the next thing I knew, I heard that Marcus was in a hospital in Maryland, recuperating. I heard his leg got blown apart, and one of his hands, too, changing the whole shape of him, making it difficult for him to walk and even more difficult to write. Or maybe he just had nothing left to confess. Maybe the shel had taken care of that.
Chapter Ten.
The morning of Aberdeen"s one hundred fortieth official May Day celebration, my sister woke up early, hobbled over to the flowered porcelain basin in her room, and threw up. Then she rinsed her mouth with Listerine, tiptoed down the hal to the bathroom, and quietly emptied the basin"s contents into the toilet. She gathered her flaxen hair into a bunch at the base of her neck and peered into the medicine cabinet mirror.
In the dingy square of gla.s.s, her eyes looked puffy and bloodshot. Her cheeks were pale, and her lips had a new ful ness to them that had absolutely nothing to do with the beeswax lip salve she used at night. Her hands traveled over her clavicles and down to cup her aching b.r.e.a.s.t.s. You only had to glance at her to know how plump and round they"d gotten or to verify that her hips were spreading out on either side of her like a pair of misplaced wings. She sighed, pinched some color into her cheeks, and set her mind to the problem of how she was going to squeeze herself into her May how she was going to squeeze herself into her May Queen gown.
It had been ten weeks since her last period-long enough for her to know that it wasn"t likely to arrive anytime soon and long enough to know why. It wasn"t long enough, however, to have figured out what to do about it. I was the only one who knew, and every hour of every day, I could feel her problem whorled inside my own abdomen like a question mark. A baby was not what my sister wanted, I was aware. I pointed this out to her as soon as she told me, a week before the festival.
"Truly, I think I"m pregnant," she said, her pretty hands twisting in her lap like a pair of kite strings. We were in Amanda Pickerton"s kitchen, which she had just repainted an avocado green. The color ricocheted off my sister"s cheeks and turned her hair into fairy moss.
"Are you sure?" Maybe she"s just being dramatic, I thought, but Serena Jane bowed her head and started crying. A baby, I knew, wasn"t going to get her a screen test in Hol ywood or her face on the covers of magazines. A baby meant soiled diapers, and drool, and sour milk. It was the most unappreciative audience in the entire world. Of course, it was easy enough for me to think al of that.
What did I know about the contorted physics of s.e.x and love? Only that I was too big to enter into them.
Every month my period came and went with the blank regularity of the moon, and if the dul cramps in my bel y and back ever made me long for the body of a boy, al I had to do was look in the mirror to know that I stood about as much chance in that department as one of August"s racehorses winning the Kentucky Derby.
Serena Jane sniffled. "What am I supposed to do? Sal Dunfry had this problem last year, and a doctor in Manhattan took care of it, but I don"t have that kind of money. Besides, I would never get the chance. Amanda would have me crucified first."
I hunkered in my chair and tucked my fist under my chin. "Is it Bob Bob"s?"
Serena Jane bit her lip and nodded. She placed the flat of one hand against her bel y and pressed inward toward her spine. "He doesn"t know yet." She sucked her bel y in some more, as if trying to wil herself back into her old shape, but it was no use. The evidence was there, as plain as day.
Anyone with two eyes and a brain could look at her and know what was happening, and soon everybody would. Everyone except Bob Bob, that was. He didn"t have a clue. Every day at school, my sister stared daggers at him, but he never so much as turned in her direction. I imagined that after al this time it must be strange for Serena Jane to have Bob Bob ignoring her-a feeling like cutting off her hair or shedding the heavy weight of a winter coat.
"Why don"t you write him a letter?" I suggested, but as soon as Serena Jane seized the pen, the muscles in her palm cramped up. She took to tracking Bob Bob with the zeal of a bloodhound, pacing the edge of the basebal field during practice, and shadowing him on his route home from school. If August didn"t need me in the barn, I went with her.
We trailed him like listless ghosts, until Bob Bob startled both of us one day, turning on us with the savagery of a kennel dog. We were on the sidewalk outside of his house. I noticed that the picket fence needed painting but couldn"t imagine Bob Bob engaged in such a menial ch.o.r.e. Probably the Morgans hired people to do things like that, I thought.
Serena Jane opened her mouth to tel him about the baby, to let the whole dilemma come pouring out of her like a stream of water, but when she tried to speak, her voice crackled and died. She just stood there, croaking like the enchanted Princess Bugaboo, until Bob Bob snorted in disgust and walked up the path to his house, leaving us on the pavement with the haunting aroma of vanil a seeping down the backs of our tongues. Serena Jane waited til he slammed his door, then leaned over the hedges and vomited while I held her hair.
Inside the Morgan house, the pale moon of Maureen Morgan"s face appeared at the parlor window, her mouth pursed into an O, her breath leaving a vapor trail on the gla.s.s. She frowned. Girls that age didn"t throw up out of love alone. In her experience, unrequited love never made anyone very sick, but requited love, wel , that had its own, corporeal consequences, and it was pretty clear which type she was looking at now. Bob Bob"s fascination with my sister over the years had been no secret-his family teased him about it nightly at the dinner table-but the thing that surprised the dinner table-but the thing that surprised Maureen was that Serena Jane had final y given in, and Bob Bob had said nothing about it. That didn"t seem right. Maureen narrowed her eyes and let the swag of heavy curtain fal back into place. From behind folds of velvet, she watched me help my sister wipe her lips with the back of one hand.
Maureen turned away. She"d seen what she needed to. She knew what had to be done.
No one in Aberdeen had been surprised when Serena Jane won a unanimous vote for the t.i.tle of May Day Queen. After al , the crown had practical y been hers since the day she was born. By age six, she"d even had the float ride down cold, a spatula cradled in the crook of one arm for a scepter, a tinfoil crown on her head, her right arm waving like a mannequin come to life. Now that the actual moment had arrived, however, I could tel that Serena Jane was finding it difficult to execute the maneuver. For one thing, the bodice of her gown was so stretched, the seams were beginning to pucker. And for another, fumes were frothing out of d.i.c.k Crane"s car with such vigor that even I felt sick. When my sister wasn"t looking, I saw d.i.c.k surrept.i.tiously tilt the rearview mirror to get a good view of her magnificent calves. A girl like that was bound to go far, he was clearly thinking, his eyes raking the mirror. My sister probably hadn"t been born that blond for nothing.
Women never were. He smacked his lips, peeling his eyes away from Serena Jane, antic.i.p.ating barbecue.
Aberdeen"s May Day celebration was the oldest continuous festival in the state of New York, a fact that d.i.c.k loved to advertise. Each spring, he had another commemorative object manufactured to mark the occasion-a proud tradition that had led to decorative mayhem in Estel e Crane"s parlor. The official May Day platter of 1962 hung on one of her wal s, the daffodils on it smeared owing to an uneven kiln temperature (the potter had been a friend of d.i.c.k"s over in Hansen).
And there, plopped on the rocking chair, was the May Day needlepoint pil ow of 1965, its bulk covered with b.u.t.terflies so smal and pale, they resembled moths.
The 1959 May Day teacup held pride of place on Estel e"s credenza, with the corresponding 1960 tea tray propped just behind it. There was an unfortunate gap between 1965 and 1967, but this year, 1969, was almost the start of a new decade. In spite of his wife"s protestations, d.i.c.k had had a phalanx of T-shirts printed up with beribboned maypoles emblazoned on the front, and on the back, in rows of big blue letters: May Day Festival! The Oldest Party in New York! Still Going Strong!
Against better judgment , Estel e wore one of the shirts to the postparade picnic on the town green, but besides Priscil a Sparrow (who we al knew harbored an abiding affection for d.i.c.k that defied age, position, and common sense), she was the only one. Estel e squinted her eyes in Prissy"s direction and sniffed.
"Forget about her," advised Cal y Hind from the potato salad station. "Everyone knows she"s nuts." She flicked her eyes over to where Serena Jane was seated majestical y on her May throne, d.i.c.k hovering over her with a platter of spareribs. "I"d worry more about her."
"Don"t be ridiculous," snorted Estel e.
"For one thing, she"d have to wrestle that plate of ribs away from d.i.c.k first, and for another, that girl has plans. If she"s going to give herself to anyone, it"s certainly never going to be to anyone from around here."
Cal y plopped a bal of potato salad onto Estel e"s plate and leaned forward for a quick heart-to-heart. "That"s not what I heard. Unless those plans include Bob Bob Morgan, an aisle, and a big white gown, that girl"s not headed anywhere anytime soon.
The ring"s as good as locked on her finger. Al she has to do is finish high school."
Estel e crinkled her brow and watched with relief as d.i.c.k returned to the gril for refil s, leaving my sister propped alone in her enormous decorated chair, placid as a dol someone had tucked back up on a high shelf for safekeeping.
Estel e"s face went soft. Maybe she was thinking of the early years of her own marriage, how bewildering it had been to be suddenly left alone in a strange house for the entire day, with nothing on her hands but a pile of laundry and a ticking clock. "That"s a but a pile of laundry and a ticking clock. "That"s a shame," she murmured. "After al , she"s stil just a girl."
"She probably found old Tabitha Morgan"s shadow book and put it to her own use,"
sniffed Madge Harkins, observing the sheen of sun fal ing on Serena Jane"s hair.
Cal y Hind shook her head. "Not hardly.
From what I hear, she could benefit from a little witchcraft, if you know what I mean. She"s in a bit of a situation." Cal y rol ed the words off her tongue like gumdrops. Estel e and Madge turned their heads toward my sister, resplendent in her satin and taffeta, and sure enough, there in the tight seams of her dress, in the heavy droop of her bosom and the fatigue pooled in her eyes, was al the proof they needed. They remembered what babies did to you right from the start and how it was downhil from there on out.
Madge clapped a hand over her mouth.
"The poor thing. What on earth was she thinking? Of al the kids in this town, I"d have thought for sure she"d be one to get out. She just had that look about her."
Estel e jabbed her fork into her potato salad. "Does Amanda know?"
"Lord, no," Cal y snorted. "What do you think? Her husband"s the vicar, and besides, as far as she"s concerned, that girl"s a real-life princess."
Madge"s eyes went dreamy. "She"l make a beautiful bride."
"a.s.suming he"l marry her."
"Oh, he wil . His folks wil see to that.
After al , the town doctor can"t very wel have his own son paddling girls up a creek and stranding them there, can he?"
"Not unless he wants to be the one to take care of the situation."
"Oh, Bob Morgan would never do that, would he?" Madge"s eyes widened.
Cal y sighed. "No, but I wouldn"t put that kind of thing past his son. It"s a good thing he doesn"t have his medical license yet. G.o.d help us when he does."
Estel e nodded. "Yes, there"s something I"ve never liked about that boy. Once, he rode his bike right over the petunia beds in my garden when I was standing next to them, and he didn"t so much as bat an eye."
Madge flapped a hand at her. "Oh, Estel e, that was ages ago. I"m sure he"s grown up ever so much since then." Her gaze shifted and caught the enormous shadow of me hovering on the edge of the food stations. "Now there"s a hopeless case," she said, rol ing her eyes toward me. "Not even witchcraft would do the trick with her. She"s a definite candidate for modern medicine."
Cal y pul ed her eyes off of my sister and turned them in my direction. "It"s almost hard to believe they"re related."
"Living out at the Dyerson place hasn"t helped matters much," Estel e added. "The poor thing. Earl wouldn"t take her to the doctor, and the Dyersons can"t. They barely have enough to eat on."
I shifted my weight from hip to hip and practiced blending in with the trees behind me, like a boulder in the shade. I stood so stil , I could have planted myself in the middle of the town green, along with the statue of Aberdeen"s founder, or in the graveyard with al the other frozen souls, inviting open opinion without getting a single feeling hurt.
"She looks like she eats plenty to me,"
Cal y gibed, but Estel e quieted her with a frown.
"It"s not her fault she"s built like a Sherman tank. Besides, maybe in her situation it"s better. Look at Serena Jane. Beauty only landed her in a rat"s nest of trouble."
The three women fel silent then, staring into their empty plates and ruminating on the paradoxical connection between opportunity and loveliness that Serena Jane and I presented. Without beauty, I knew, life"s possibilities might pa.s.s me up, but too much loveliness was clearly a liability. It was like a train wreck, pul ing in trouble. So in the end, maybe it real y was me who was better off, I thought. I was ugly-no one was going to dispute that-but I was also so big that nothing in life was going to slide past me. And if it did, then maybe I was smart enough to let it keep going.
As Mayor d.i.c.k Crane official y announced the 1969 May Queen with salivary glee, I sweltered politely along with the town, applauding when appropriate, the backs of my thighs stuck to a wooden folding chair. I was alone in the very last row of seats set up on the gra.s.s and could see the back of Bob Bob"s head three rows up. He was perspiring for different reasons. I watched him watch my sister a.s.sume her throne on the little dais with her usual grace and a greenish tinge around her lips, and then I saw him reach into his pocket and finger the emerald-cut diamond ring his mother had given him that morning.
Technical y, it was his and always had been-his grandmother had wil ed it to his future wife-but I bet he never expected that he would real y have any use for such an object. His mother, however, had had other ideas. She"d barged into his room just as he was waking up, handed him the little green velvet box, and said, "You take this ring, and you make everything right." Bob Bob had looked at the emphatic line of her lips-a line no one ever dared to cross-and hadn"t said a word. He"d merely stretched out his arm and accepted the box.
After she"d left, he"d opened the lid and peered at the luminescent gem. It reminded him of the gla.s.s pebbles his mother used in her flower vases, and his heart had suddenly contracted in panic as he"d realized that Serena Jane would most likely insist on similar niceties. Linen napkins for eight, crystal vials of perfume, beveled picture frames fil ed with flaxen-haired children, not to mention that d.a.m.n quilt his parents had-Serena Jane would no doubt demand her fair share of household loot.
Or would she? The thing was, in spite of his years of scrutiny of my sister, Bob Bob actual y knew little to nothing about her. He had no idea that her favorite flowers were pansies, no clue that she snored like a truck driver, that she ate popcorn and not candy at the movies, and that her favorite chocolates were fil ed with lavender cream. As far as Bob Bob was concerned, girls shouldn"t eat, smoke, sweat, swear, or s.h.i.t. And if they did, he didn"t want to know about it. Of course, that was about to change. As soon as he put his grandmother"s ring on Serena Jane"s finger, I knew, she"d begin her offensive. She would nag him to change his socks.
She would throw away his favorite basebal cap. She would insist he wear proper shoes instead of sneakers, drink beer from a gla.s.s, and mow the lawn on Sat.u.r.day. Bob Bob may have thought he was the one holding the prize as he dangled that ring between his forefinger and thumb inside his pocket, but soon enough, Serena Jane was going to be the one pul ing the strings.
I thought Bob Bob might have had more finesse in choosing his moment, but he caught my sister just as she was descending the dais steps, her arms ful of th.o.r.n.y, uncomfortable roses, her kitten heels skittering on the plywood. He didn"t bother to kneel. "Here," he said, thrusting the ring out at her.
My sister blinked at the diamond blazing in front of her like an accusing eye. She reached out a languid, bare arm and plucked the jewel from Robert Morgan"s fingers. "What"s this?"
The il wil of the moment flushed Bob Bob"s cheeks a mild crimson. "It was my grandmother"s. My mother thinks you should have it."
Serena Jane exhaled, her breath tinted with the cloves she was chewing to keep nausea at bay. "Oh," she whispered. She wondered who had told Mrs. Morgan or if she"d just figured it out on her told Mrs. Morgan or if she"d just figured it out on her own. Bob Bob"s mother was spooky that way. She always could tel which kids had been out drinking over the weekend and who had taken up smoking, even if it was only one or two a day, and everyone knew it wasn"t Bob Bob who was tel ing her. He barely even spoke to his parents. She watched him prop an elbow on the dais"s banister.
"So, is it true?" he demanded.
Serena Jane nodded, unaware that her yel ow hair, capped with its faux tiara, cast off little sparks of its own in the afternoon sun. "Yes."
Bob Bob clamped his jaw tight. One time, you could tel he was thinking. It was only one time. For a physician"s son, I thought he might have been a little better at grasping the basics of human biology. He pul ed in his stomach. "I guess my mother"s right, then." My sister didn"t answer him, so Bob Bob thrust his chin toward her. "Go ahead. Put it on." He watched as Serena Jane slid the narrow platinum band over her fourth knuckle. The ring was a little big on her hand. It teetered on her finger. Bob Bob sighed. "So." The word reverberated between the two of them like a note strummed on a warped guitar.
The wooden seats emptied. On the green, people started packing up their picnics and children, wrapping dog leashes around their wrists, and bidding farewel to their friends. The afternoon was coming to a close, and the party was over for another year. Estel e Crane was tugging d.i.c.k away from the vicinity of Priscil a Sparrow. Cal y Hind was badgering her son about the amount of beer he"d consumed, and Amanda Pickerton was methodical y sealing her leftovers in appropriately sized Tupperware containers. One by one, blankets were folded and wicker hampers closed. Soon, I was the only one left slumped behind a dogwood tree on the edge of the lawn. Through its budding leaves, I watched Bob Bob block my sister on the steps. I watched Serena Jane hold up her hand and tilt it, then bury her face in her two palms as if tel ing herself a secret.
I waited until they left, walking side by side, but without touching, and crept over to the dais.
On the bottom step, I found Serena Jane"s May Queen sash, wilted and speckled with spatters of seasonal mud. Every year that happened to the girls.
They romped over the lawn, and climbed in and out of boys" convertibles, and then realized too late that they were freckled with Aberdeen"s dark soil. It was stupid. I could have told them what would happen, but they never thought to ask.
I glanced around, but no one was paying any attention, so I reached down and picked up the sash, draping it over my neck and one shoulder. I didn"t care if the sash was muddy-in my eyes, it was stil a prize, something you might hang on a Christmas tree or tie around a present. I thought to run after my sister with it, but Serena Jane was already gone, shuffled off by Bob Bob into her new life. It was a lonely feeling, watching her hobble off with him, like watching a movie that ends badly. Oh well, I thought. At least she"d get to be a bride. She"d like that.
I lingered at the little dais for a moment more, one foot poised on the bottom step, contemplating climbing the stage and a.s.suming my sister"s throne. But I could imagine the jeers and taunts that would receive. I pul ed my foot down and removed the sash- a cheap piece of ribbon that crumpled in my square hands. Al along its edges, I saw that little pieces of thread were fraying and that its ends were simply glued together. Just like anything else in life.
I jammed the sash in the pocket of my blue jeans and went on my way, amazed at the elegance of the early evening sky opening up above me. One by one, tiny stars appeared and then the slimmest arc of the moon, transforming Aberdeen from a weedy, upstate town to a twilit garden. I reminded myself that things were not always what they seemed, large or smal , beautiful or rough. I resolved to pay more careful attention to the things around me. No matter how they appeared, I reasoned, things could always change, sometimes maybe even for the better.
Chapter Eleven.
Serena Jane managed to last eight years with Bob Bob, which, if you think about it, is a long time to do penance for anything, never mind for an evening that wasn"t your fault. In al of that time, I saw her only twice. The first time was right after her wedding in mid-June. I wasn"t invited-no one was. It was just Bob Bob, and Serena Jane, and his parents, al of them grim-jawed and quaking in Judge Warson"s office. Serena Jane wore an aquamarine dress the same color as her eyes, and even from my vantage point in August"s truck across the street, the effect was unsettling, making her milk white skin jump out like a ghost"s. She carried a half-wilted nosegay of roses and had tied her hair in a severe knot at the back of her neck.
"I"m sorry, Truly, but I don"t want anyone there," she insisted when I offered to be her maid of honor. "It"s just going to be a quick ceremony, and then we"re moving to Buffalo while Bob Bob"s in medical school."
"Where are you having the baby?"
"Where are you having the baby?"
Serena Jane drummed lightly on her bel y with her fingers. "Why, Buffalo, of course. That"s where everything wil happen from now on, I guess."
I tried to imagine my sister alone in a strange city with no one for company but Bob Bob.
Then I tried to imagine myself without Serena Jane in Aberdeen. Maybe we weren"t sisters like those girls in Little Women or any of the other books I"d read, but she was al I had of kin. Of the two of us, I figured, she probably had it worse, and I have to admit, a little part of me was glad. That"s what she gets, I thought, for going off and leaving me again. I turned my eyes to her, hoping she couldn"t see the tears swimming in them. "When wil I see you next?"
"I don"t know, Truly." Serena Jane blew a wisp of hair off her face. "Christmas, maybe? I imagine we"l be back for the holidays, after the baby"s born."
But they weren"t, not for Thanksgiving and not for Christmas, either. The Thanksgiving break was going to be too short, Serena Jane explained in a quick note she sent me in early November, Bob Bob had exams, and the baby was due any minute. They would be home in December, though, for certain.
"What"s the matter?" Amelia asked as she watched me fold the letter up and slide it back in its envelope. She had grown tal and thin over the past few years, but her skin was stil as pale as ever, and even though her speech had improved to the point where she would sometimes talk to people outside her family, I could always stil hear the trouble her tongue had with certain letters. "Bad news?" Her voice, when it arrived, stil had the stubborn and rough quality of a tree stump planted in the ground.
People were often surprised that her voice was deeper than mine.
We were sitting on the beds in our shared room. I turned to her. When had Amelia"s face become more recognizable to me than my own sister"s? I wondered. I took in her wet brown eyes and half-bow mouth. If I"d closed my own eyes and grabbed a pencil, I probably could have sketched Amelia to the perfect likeness. Was familiarity as good as blood? I wondered. I laid the letter on my bed, missing my sister, my heart confused.
The baby was a boy named Robert, of course. "Look," I breathed, showing off the three-by-three black-and-white photo to Amelia. He looked like a tiny warrior, with his fists bundled tightly underneath his chin and his eyes alert. "He was born at four-fifteen a.m.," I read, "and weighed seven pounds three ounces. They"re cal ing him Bobbie."
Amelia examined the photograph. "He looks like Serena Jane," she said, "but with Robert Morgan"s mouth. That"l be trouble later."
But I thought Bobbie looked perfect-so perfect, I wished he were mine. I wondered what motherhood was like, if having a tiny sack of skin and air to hold every minute was a blessing or a burden. There were different kinds of mothers in this world, I knew. I"d watched the cats in the barn. Some of them lavished maternal pride over their offspring, ostentatiously purring and running their sandpaper tongues over the litter. And other mother cats just did the bare minimum, birthing their kittens, then turning tail and lighting out for the fields. I didn"t know what made a cat stay with her brood, nor could I identify what it was in the world that lured the bad ones back to the wild so soon or so hard, but I hoped my sister was more like the former.
I placed the photograph of Bobbie in the s...o...b..x I kept hidden under my bed at the Dyersons", which, in addition to my father"s old winnings from August"s horses and some more recent ones of my own, contained the single wedding photograph of my parents and a newspaper clipping of Serena Jane as May Queen.