Here on Earth (28 page)

They don’t have much to say to each other as they head for Hollis’s truck; anyway, it would be hard to have a decent conversation with the wind blowing the way it is. When they reach the statue of the Founder, March pats his knee for luck. She has the oddest feeling that she dare not pass by the statue without giving in to this silly, superstitious act, as if on this blustery day she was, indeed, in desperate need of luck.

“Should we go to the Bluebird for lunch?” March asks Hollis.

“And see more of these idiot townsfolk? I don’t think my stomach could take it.”

After they’ve gotten into the truck, Hollis pulls her close and holds his face against hers and whispers about why he wants to be alone with her, how he wants to take her up to bed and show her how much he loves her, and March feels less jittery about the way he’s been acting lately. But then Hollis starts talking about Bud Horace, and how Bud had better keep his dick in his pants. Did Hollis always speak this way? March truly can’t remember. Did he always get angry so fast?

They’re all pathetic, that’s what he’s saying now, with their moronic fund-raisers and their false cheer. He could buy them and sell them, he could do it in seconds flat; he could have them down on their knees and begging, each and every one, the members of the town council and shopkeepers alike, if he held out a big enough check. And where do they get off looking at him, looking at March? Where does that fucking Bud Horace think he’s going to go with his used sports coat and his goddamned smile?

“Trust me,” March says to Hollis when they stop for a red light. “I don’t even know what Bud Horace looks like. Why should I? I’m only interested in you.”

She kisses him then, hard and deep, but she has the nagging feeling that she’s faking something. And worse—that she’d better. He’s always been jealous, she knows that. Well, so has she. If he doesn’t want other men looking at her, so what? It’s because he loves her, that’s all. It’s because he cares.

She needs to concentrate less on the what-ifs and more on the here and nows. She needs to take pleasure in going day by day. Since they’ve begun living together, they don’t go out very much, or at least March doesn’t. She has set up a work space on the third floor, in an old guest bedroom, and she’s begun to work on holiday presents: beautiful silver pendants, one for Susie and another for Gwen, luminous little things to slip onto silver chains, formed into the shape of crescent moons. March works when Hollis goes off in the mornings, to check his properties, and when he’s at meetings in the evenings. She doesn’t even realize how often she’s alone until she’s run out of silver, and has to ask Hollis to pick up more on his next trip into Boston.

But Hollis’s next trip to the city falls on a Sunday, so all the shops will be closed, and March won’t be able to get her silver after all. It’s an emergency meeting with his lawyer, something about a hurricane and his property in Florida. March is still in bed and Hollis is in the shower on the morning he’s to go to Boston, when the phone rings. It’s early, and again March feels anxious—she’s afraid the caller will be Hollis’s lawyer, with bad news that will set him off. Or worse, that Richard will finally phone here. But when March picks up the receiver it’s only Ken Helm, calling to let her know that the big chestnut tree over on the hill has blight.

“I can’t promise we can save it,” Ken tells her, “but we can try.”

As they speak, March can hear Ken’s wife and kids in the background. Ken will be lucky to have enough in the bank to pay his mortgage this month, and yet here he is, worrying about a chestnut tree on a Sunday morning.

March rolls over onto her stomach. It’s warm under the satin quilt. She’s only wearing panties, and doesn’t want to get out of bed, especially not to go look at a tree, but Ken seems so serious when he speaks about the effects of blight.

“All right,” March finally agrees. “I’ll meet you there at ten. Right after Hollis leaves.”

When March reaches to replace the phone onto the night table she sees that Hollis has been watching her. He has a towel around his waist and his wet hair is plastered to his head and the way he’s staring at her makes her feel guilty, about what, however, she’s not certain.

“Hey.” March smiles. “Come back to bed.”

He walks toward her without a word; he’s amazingly quick, or maybe it only seems that way, but before March knows it, he’s torn the blue quilt off and has grabbed her by her wrists, wrenching her to her feet.

“Who the hell was that?” is what she thinks he’s shouting.

“Wait a second,” March says.

He’s really hurting her; any more pressure would probably snap her wrist bones.

“Hollis!” she says.

“Who was that on the phone?” He pulls her over to the dressing table, then shoves her against the mirror. The glass is icy cold against March’s bare skin. “Who were you going to meet?”

“It was Ken.”

“Don’t fuck with me, March.” His voice sounds completely empty.

“I’m not.” Her heart is beating much too fast, as if she were scared of him.

“I mean it.”

“So do I. It was Ken Helm on the phone.”
Thank God it was only Ken,
that’s what she’s thinking. That is the one and only thought she can manage. “That old tree on Fox Hill is dying and he wants me to meet him to okay some work.”

Hollis looks at her closely. He may not believe her yet.

“That’s not your property. Why would he ask for your okay?”

“He probably thought it was too trivial to bother you with.” March can feel herself sweet-talking Hollis. That’s what she’s doing, and it turns out she’s good at it. Who would have guessed? She’s not only a good liar, she is better than average at flattery. Already, Hollis is easing up on her wrists and she’s no longer pushed against the mirror. She doesn’t want to think about the way glass breaks, a jagged, unreliable shattering, so that you never can tell who will get hurt. “It’s a stupid tree. That’s all. He wouldn’t have thought you’d be interested.”

Hollis is still looking at her, but the situation no longer seems as dangerous.
Maybe it never was,
March thinks.
It probably never was.
He raises her wrists to his mouth, kissing first one, then the other, right at the most delicate spot, where the veins crisscross.

“I thought you went crazy on me,” March says, relieved.

It turns out that her legs are shaking. They probably have been all along, but she doesn’t realize this fact until he draws her closer to the edge of the dressing table. This is where Annabeth Cooper used to carefully apply her lipstick and rouge; she had three hairbrushes, all made of tortoiseshell, all imported from France.

Hollis pulls March nearer still, close enough so he can ease off her panties and fuck her right there, without saying a word, without asking.

“Listen,” he tells her when he’s done, “tell Ken Helm to do whatever he wants. I don’t mind paying to save that tree.”

When Hollis leaves, March stands at the bedroom window. He didn’t hit her, that’s all she knows. He wouldn’t do that to her. She watches Hollis get into his truck and drive away. She knows what people say about Belinda, but she doesn’t care. Hollis never loved Belinda, and she was a fool to marry him. This is what no one has ever understood, including Susie: He is different with March, and when all is said and done, he didn’t mean to hurt her. He’d never do that.

She’ll think about the yard at Fox Hill, that’s what she’ll do. She’ll think about the nights when she and Hollis sat out there, searching for privacy and for stars. Whose tree is it, March now wonders, that chestnut so old there isn’t another like it in the entire county? Does it belong to the man who owns the land where it grows, or the woman who looked into its branches every day for three years, or the person who can save it from blight? Does it belong to those doves who come back year after year to nest, or to the sky above, or to the earth in which its roots are settled?

March showers for a long time, hoping to get rid of those cold, blue marks Hollis left on her skin where he grabbed her and held on too tightly. When she faces the mirror she notices the white strands in her hair. She should go into town to the Bon Bon and have it colored, or buy a package of dye at the pharmacy, but she’s simply in no mood for that. Instead, she pulls her hair back into an elastic band; she gets dressed in an old thermal undershirt of Hollis’s and a pair of jeans, then pulls on her boots. What will happen to those foolish doves if the tree has to be chopped down? They should have been chased away in October; March should have shaken a broom at them until they were forced to flee from their own bad judgment.

When she’s dressed, March makes tea and toast with butter, but she’s really not hungry. The way he twisted her wrists hurt, and the way he fucked her hurt as well, but she’s not going to think about that. Nothing happened, after all. Not really. It’s just that some mornings you want breakfast, and some you don’t. When Hank comes downstairs, still half asleep and uncomfortable in March’s presence, she suggests he have her toast. As she washes up the few dishes in the sink, March can look through the window to see Gwen in a nearby pasture, exercising that old racehorse. From this distance they look so small, horse and girl both, like toys made of tin.

“Are you okay?” Hank asks when he brings his dishes to the sink. He insists on washing his own plate and coffee cup.

“I have to go over to Fox Hill and meet Ken Helm, and I guess I don’t feel like it.”

Hank offers to drive her over. He’s had his license for ages, he explains, and he never gets to drive because Hollis doesn’t allow him use of the truck. Hank has been saving every cent he manages to get hold of for a car of his own, although whatever he could afford wouldn’t even be half as good as March’s beat-up Toyota. As they leave the house, March tosses Hank the keys; then she grabs two letters she plans to leave for the letter carrier to pick up when he makes his delivery. One envelope is addressed to a jewelry shop on Newbury Street and the other to a craft store in Cambridge. March sent both shops photos of her bracelets, and neither has responded, so she’s giving it one more try, suggesting to both that she display some of her pieces on a commission basis. At this point, March is seriously broke. If she wanted to buy a package of hair dye, she’d have to put it on Hollis’s tab at the pharmacy. Last week she had to ask Hollis for ten dollars so she could give Gwen her weekly lunch money, and although he was more than generous, she hates to be one of those people who can’t pull their own weight.

“Do you mind dumping these in the mailbox for me?” she asks Hank. “I’ll let Gwen know we’re going.” As Hank heads for the mailbox, March walks toward the pasture, waving. “We have to go up to Fox Hill to look at a sick tree,” she calls.

Gwen looks up and blinks. She sees Hank on his way from the mailbox to the Toyota. “We?” She’s so used to her mother’s recent detachment, her interest only in Hollis, that Gwen is too startled to do anything more than nod.

“We’ll be back before you know it.”

Hank has started the Toyota and now drives over to pick up March. “That threw her for a loop.” March laughs when she gets in. “You and me together.” March notices that Hank is too tall for the Toyota and has to scrunch down in his seat. He looks so serious and so young that March feels moved. He’s shy and uncomfortable about making conversation and he hasn’t had much practice driving. When he least expects it, he has to swerve to avoid hitting a rabbit, and they nearly barrel right into a stone fence.

“Sorry,” Hank tells March.

“It’s all right.” March says. He looks amazingly like Alan, had Alan been sweet-tempered. “Those rabbits think they own the place.”

Hank nods. It’s awkward being with March, and he’s relieved when they reach the house on Fox Hill to find that Ken Helm is already there. These woods were once filled with chestnut trees, but in forty years the species has been all but destroyed, and now it seems this old specimen will meet a similar fate.

“Drastic measures,” Ken says grimly as they join him to study the tree. “That’s what we need.”

He’ll cut off most of the limbs in the hopes of salvaging the trunk, even though he’s doubtful that the tree can be saved. March tells him to go ahead and do as he sees fit, still, she worries about the doves who are peering down at them from their nest.

“They’re going to have to move,” Ken tells March as he goes to get his saw and ladder from his truck.

“I want to make sure nothing happens to them,” March calls.

“I’ll do my best,” Ken says. “I can’t do more.”

Hank has been leaning against a small maple tree, looking at the empty house. He has almost no memory of ever living here, except for the day of the fire. He remembers more than most people would guess; that the fire seemed liquid, for instance, that it looked so pretty he wanted to reach out and touch the flames, but his mother wouldn’t let him. She told him no.

“Let’s go inside and see how the place looks,” March suggests.

“I don’t think so,” Hank says.

“Oh, come on. Let’s take a peek.”

March goes on ahead, and Hank finds himself following. The house hasn’t been unoccupied that long, but the pipes have been drained, and it’s colder inside than it is out. Aside from a few big pieces of furniture—the dining room table, the couch—it’s empty. They can hear an echo as they walk through the rooms, like the past coming right back at them. Hank goes to the doorway into the kitchen; he knows exactly what he’s looking for. To the right of the frame, where the wallpaper is worn, he can see charred wood. He found this one day when he was visiting Mrs. Dale, and after that he always felt he had to revisit the spot, as though paying his respects.

“I’ll be outside,” he calls to March.

“That was a stupid suggestion of mine,” March says later when she comes out to the porch. “You must be upset when you come here. You must think of your mother.”