On Shifting Sand (32 page)

She buries her nose in the petals and is smiling when she draws it away. “You goin’ home, then?”

“Yes. And you’re sounding much better. I’m sure you will be soon too.”

“Doc says about a week. That’s how it goes with this. They either decide they can save you or figure out they cain’t. No use keepin’ a body here to die.”

“Here.” I reach into my pocketbook and produce a small card I’ve prepared for this occasion. “My address. In Featherling. Write to me, if you like.”

She takes the card, and judging by the depth of her study, I know she isn’t accustomed to reading or writing much of anything. Still, she looks up, and I see for the first time in our acquaintance a hint of light in her eyes.

“What would I write about?”

“Life. After you get home. And I’ll write back about mine. We both have a lot to live for.”

Russ calls me away, so I offer Ladonna nothing more than a quick squeeze of her hand before joining him. Together we walk to the front lobby desk, where Nurse Betty waits with a cardboard box filled with boxes of Jell-O, cans of Campbell’s soup, and a paper sack filled with apples.

“Doctor’s orders,” she says, though the conspiratorial smiles of the other nurses lead me to believe this is more their doing than his. “No offense, honey, but we don’t want to see you back.”

I interpret the next small gesture as an invitation and throw myself into her arms, surrounding myself with the final white cloud of her strength.

The car is gleaming clean—a condition I haven’t seen in recent memory. Russ puts the box of supplies in the trunk alongside the requisite bottles of water and the coiled-up chain. It is a three-hour drive from Boise City to Featherling, and starting this late in the day is not ideal. For the moment, the sky is clear, and we are well prepared should a storm overtake us on the road home.

“We’ll be fine,” Russ says, obviously sensing my unease. “It won’t be like last time.”

“Last time?”

“When you were caught. Alone. If nothing else, you’ll be with me.”

I let him kiss me before opening my door, and then again after he’s settled in beside me. The car roars to life the minute he hits the starter switch, and we pull away from the hospital with me hanging out the window, waving a final good-bye to Nurse Betty.

“They were truly wonderful to me,” I say, looking forward again.

“Yep.”

For the first time, I notice a tightness in Russ’s jaw, and it takes little for me to discern the cause of it.

“I didn’t see the final bill. Was it a lot?”

He takes one hand off the wheel to pat my leg. “Nothing to worry about.”

“Of course it’s something to worry about. How much was it?”

“Let’s talk later. After you’ve had a chance to see the kids. I’ll bet they can’t wait to see you.”

I know better than to pursue the conversation. Without ever being unkind or abrupt, Russ has a way of making it very clear when a topic has run its course. His silence is in no way reassuring. If anything, I worry more about what my indiscretion has cost us in measurable financial terms. Everything else—the intimacy, the comfort, the revitalized joy—all of that I can restore with my own efforts. But I have no way of bringing an actual cash flow into the family. And though I’d never say as much to Russ, neither does he. The money we got for the store’s goods was distributed to our suppliers, enabling us to cancel the debts of our customers and to pay the outstanding taxes on the store building itself and our farm. We eked out a budget from what was left over, given that the salary from the church had all but dried up. With this—my illness—surely whatever we had left is gone.

“I’m sorry,” I say, leaning my head against his shoulder. “I’ve cost us so much.”

“God will provide.” He says it with the immediacy that always comes when he speaks through his faith. “Do you believe that?”

“I suppose so.”

I wait for him to chastise me for my doubt, but instead I feel his shoulder quake beneath me in what is either a sigh or a chuckle.

“Oh, darling. He already has.”

  CHAPTER 20
  

T
HE DRIVE FROM
B
OISE
C
ITY
takes us through what once was lush, thriving farmland. The first time I took this drive with Russ, we’d gone into town to see a Gloria Swanson film. Not that we didn’t have a theater in Featherling. We did—still do—but had we gone there, we couldn’t have held hands in the darkness, or snuck kisses to coincide with those of the lovers on the screen. On the drive home, the car open to the stars and the cool spring air, we took a turn off the main road, found a grove of trees in the middle of an empty field, and gave way to the passions of our youth.

“You remember that night?” Russ has never failed to mention it, all throughout our marriage, anytime we have occasion to pass by the turn. My response is to say we’d just seen
Shifting Sands
, and from there we launch into a narrative reliving all but the most lurid of details. Once, when Ronnie was about five years old, we had to bring the story to an abrupt end, and he’d bounced on the seat all the way
home, demanding to know why he couldn’t go see the trees too. Russ told him that was something he’d do when he was a little older, and I punched his arm—hard—unable to imagine our little boy in such a clutch.

“Of course I remember,” I say. “We’d just seen
Shifting Sands
, and . . .”

The boastful beauty of the farmland has been turned to desert, nothing but drifts and dunes of soil, punctuated by the occasional half-buried fence post. Our grove—once hidden from the road by other vegetation—now stands stark on the horizon, leafless and barren as November.

“You were so—” It is his line to say I was beautiful, but he stops short. “Alluring, I think is the word. More than beautiful; I knew plenty of beautiful girls in my time. But you—like one of those sirens we learned about in Greek mythology. Even though you were right beside me in the car, I felt like you were leading me away.”

“To your doom?” I make my voice light, but I know—always have known—that I’d never given Russ any reason to feel like he’d taken advantage of my youthful innocence. We’d been innocent together, he perhaps more than I, and I’d offered him everything with our first kiss.

“Maybe. My downfall, at the very least. I knew that night I’d marry you.”

“Even if you didn’t have to?”

“I had to. Not because of the baby, but because—sin or not—you made me feel like a man. Like I was fulfilling what God wanted me to be. Like Solomon, or David. But I never wanted any other woman. Not before you, not since. Not ever.”

I close my eyes, reducing my world to the feel of my arm entwined with his and the motion of the car around me. I know I should say something like-minded in return, but every layer of silence entombs my sin all the deeper. Instead, I mutter, “I love you, Russ,” and then something about being eager to see the kids. Then I feign sleep, and within a mile or so, fall true to my slumber.

Though I’ve been gone from Featherling only a matter of days, I feel as if I’m returning to a place already long forgotten. It used to be that the drive home from Boise City meant passing by one farm after another, with bits of conversation about the families who lived on them—their latest tragedies and triumphs. On this day, conversation is rendered unnecessary. Dirt fields, abandoned houses, fences choked with tumbleweeds. In town, too, it seems more storefronts are boarded up, windows dark, shades drawn. Like life itself has been scraped up and taken away.

But then, as we park the car in front of our own emptied store, my little Ariel comes running down the stairs, wild, untamed curls flying.

“You’re home! You’re home! You’re home!” She shouts it first, as if alerting the remnants of the neighborhood, and repeats it with hot tears on my shoulder. Russ’s warnings about being careful, gentle, because Mama had been very, very sick go unheeded. She clings to me, demanding promises that I will never, ever go away from her again, and I make those promises with kisses trailing every inch of her sweet, wet face.

Pa and Ronnie are less enthusiastic in their welcoming. Ronnie stands at the foot of the stairs and offers me a cautious hug. Pa waits at the top and says his first words after I climb up to him.

“Had us all worried sick, you know.”

“I’m sorry.” I wait for him to step aside and allow me entrance to my own home.

One step over the threshold, and I long for the stark, impeccable cleanliness of the hospital. In my absence, a fine layer of dust has been invited to coat every surface, and accumulated dirt cushions my steps. The air is close and hot, smells of grease and unwashed clothes.

“I’m glad you were here to take care of the kids, Pa.” They, at least, appear to be in the same state of being as they were when I left. “I know that couldn’t have been easy for you.”

“They’s good kids,” he says in the tone I’ve learned to classify as praise.

I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to convince Russ that I am resting, even as I surreptitiously swipe a cleaning rag over every piece of furniture within reach. Tomorrow I’ll have Ronnie beat the rugs while I sweep the floors, but I have to resign myself to sleeping in grit-ridden sheets for this first night home.

Merrilou Brown shows up at the door with a covered dish of red beans and rice, a ritual I can only assume has repeated itself throughout the duration of my stay in the hospital. The minute she sets the dish on the table, I take her hands and whisper a fervent thanks.

“It’s nothing.” She twitches her little arms, but I hold on. “It was nice having little ones to cook for again.”

“Not just for the suppers.” I dart my eyes above her head to ensure a moment’s privacy. “Russ told me what you said. About your worries . . .”

“Oh, that.” This time she does break away. “I tried to warn you myself, you know.”

Her chastisement diminishes me. “I know.”

“And I’m afraid your nerves got the better of you.”

“You’re right.”

“But the good Lord has a way of bringing all of our darkness into light, doesn’t he?”

“He does.” My smile is no match for her sincerity, offering neither grace nor gratitude. “And you’re such a dear to bring supper, but I’m sure I’m up to the task after today.”

“It’ll be easier, I’m sure, once the surplus comes in.”

“Surplus?”

“Pastor Russ didn’t tell you? Well—” she gives my arm a quick, birdlike squeeze—“I’ll let him explain. I need to get back to Mr. Brown before he takes it upon himself to scorch the biscuits.”

She yodels a good-bye to Russ and the kids, and I fight back a tinge of jealousy at the warmth with which they—especially Ronnie—see her through the door. After a deep swallow of my pride, I summon everybody to the table, running a damp rag over each plate before setting it on the fresh cloth I spread down before Merrilou’s arrival.

“This glass clean?” Pa asks, inspecting it even as I hand it over. I wonder if he asked himself that same question during his years of living alone, or if he asked it of Merrilou Brown before sitting down to consume her supper, or if it is an inquiry reserved specially for me.