The Lighthouse Road (40 page)

   "Oh, sure, we've covered it. Or you have. Mister Everything Will Be All Right. Mister We Don't Need No One. You've covered it, all right."

   "What the hell do you want me to say, Rebekah? What in fuck's name is going to get the sulk out of you?"

   She didn't say anything, only lay there on the davenport with her arm over her eyes. Odd and Harry still stood at the window, Odd whispering to Harry an account of a gray squirrel husking a pinecone on the bough of a tree.

   "That first day her milk came in, and you ate and then filled your diaper and slept for six straight hours, she held you the whole time. She always held you. Sang those fool songs." Her words trailed off. Odd turned to look at her.

   "I want to understand, Rebekah. I do. But I don't see your unhappiness. It doesn't make sense."

   She looked at him for a long time. Eyes as vacant as two stones. She might have been dead for all the life in her.

   Odd kept at it. "He's a hundred percent perfect, this one. Sure, he's hard to get fed. I know that. And I know it's you suffering his temper tantrums when he's at the teat. But he's brand-new to this business. Might you give him an inch of rope?"

   If it was possible, the look on her face went even more expressionless. Still she would not look away from him.

   "Some things just aren't meant to be understood," she said. "Some things are just invisible and out of reach."

   Odd crossed the room, offered her Harry. "He ain't out of reach. He's right goddamn here. Take him."

   She put her arm back over her eyes. "Your mother," Rebekah began before Odd could say more, "she was real sad after you were born. Melancholy's what Hosea called it. Said she had the sadness disease. But still she wouldn't set you down. She wouldn't stop ogling you. She was more in love with you than she could even imagine."

   Odd had cradled Harry back in his arm. Now he sat on the end of the davenport.

   Rebekah tucked her feet up beneath her to make room for him. " Hosea had a way to get the sadness out of her," she continued. "Cut it right out of her, that's how he described it." She shook her head under her arm.

   "What are you talking about, cut it right out of her?"

   "He did an operation. An ovariotomy, he called it. He cut the sadness out of her."

   " Maybe there's a way to cut the sadness out of you." He couldn't help feeling hopeful, still clung to some thought they could all three of them be a happy family.

   She looked at him under her arm. "Sadness has no hold on me, Odd. It's something else. Besides, when Hosea got the sadness out of her, he got everything else, too. The whole life of her."

   Odd sat up. "What do you mean the whole life of her? What are you talking about?"

   " After the operation. She got sick."

   "You always told me it was a fever she died of."

   "She did. A fever he conjured up, I suppose."

   Now Odd stood. "What's that mean?"

   "Your mother didn't have any sadness in her, Odd. That's what I was telling you. She was the happiest person I ever saw in those days after you were born. She needed that operation like the lake needs more water."

   Odd stood there trembling. He'd always been led to believe that his mother had died naturally. A simple fever that had got the best of her. "Are you telling me she got the fever because of Hosea?"

   "I don't know why she got the fever, but it came a day after the surgery."

   "He
killed
her?" he whispered. "Is that what you're saying?"

   "How could I know?"

   Odd looked down at Harry. For a long time he just looked at the boy sleeping in his arm. "How come you never told me before? Why didn't anyone do anything?"

   "He was trying to help her."

   "He's got every living soul hoodwinked."

   "What difference does it make? The how or the why? You're an orphan either way. Nothing was going to change that. Not then, not now."

   Odd walked back to the window. The squirrel was still on the bough.

   "I believe he thought he was doing the right thing. For what it's worth, I believe that," she said.

   "What is that? You and this notion Hosea needs defending? He's lousy. Any way you slice it, he's lousy. And you talking for the hundredth time like he was some upstanding man."

   " Where would you be without him?"

   Odd spun around. "We're gonna cover that territory again, too? Hell, no." He shook his head slowly. "Hell, no, we ain't. H
osea our sav
ior. Y
ou must be out of your mind, Rebekah."

   "I guess I am," she said. "I guess I am."

A
nd maybe she was. How else to account for her?

   Sargent had given Odd two weeks off, and when Odd returned to the boatwright's on a Monday morning it was with grave misgivings. The week passed and his misgivings grew, and on Friday evening, after work, after Odd had made supper and given Harry his bath, after Rebekah had fed the boy and put him to sleep in his basinet, she asked Odd to sit down. So he did.

   She had that look on her face like the night of his birthday, in his fish house. Like she was about to tell him the end times were nigh. "I'm sorry what I told you about your mother," she said. "I'm trying to —" Her voice emptied out, got lost in one of her sighs.

   Most of these conversations during the last week, Odd had just quit. Walked into the bedroom or right out the door. But this night was different. He didn't know why.

   Rebekah began again. "I told you about your mother because thinking of her is the only way any of this makes sense to me. The way she felt, that's how I'm supposed to feel. I'm supposed to be as happy as she was. I couldn't get to happiness on a train. Maybe Hosea could make me happy."

   "Sure, give him a chance to kill you, too."

   She looked up at him. "You could never understand. Not about me, or your mother."

   "I
don't
understand, you're right. Not what you're saying. Not how you're acting. And sure as shit not how Hosea could make you happy. Hosea goddamn killed her. He killed her and then tried to be my old man. I hope he's hung himself up by the neck." There was no rancor in his voice. No exasperation. Not even any curiosity. He was taking his own account was all.

   "If you really understand about my mother," Odd continued, "then you'd see what you're doing to Harry. He might as well be an orphan. Half an orphan, leastways. How much you hate him."

   "I don't hate Harry, Odd." She shook her head, as though he were the biggest fool. "You and me. Harry next. We're all orphans."

   Odd stood there in disbelief, mustering the right words to end this season's long conversation once and for all. He simply could not bear it any longer. He smiled at her. Shook his head. Said, "Rebekah, darlin', I love you. I don't care how we got here or what kind of right or wrong it is, but Harry is our boy. That's all there is now. That's all there'll ever be. I know you're mixed up. But here's something you need to hear from me." He paused again, looking down at Rebekah, who was looking back up at him with tears in her eyes. "If you abandon our boy once, you abandon him forever. If you walk away, our boy will never know you. Much as it would kill me, I'll see to it. So help me God."

S
trange that he should find himself standing outside Gloria Dei Lutheran Church on Sunday morning. Harry was sleeping in his buggy, the canopy pulled up to block the hot sun. Odd himself was shielding his eyes with his cap, looking up at Sargent's church. From inside he could hear the organ piping in harmony with the singing congregation.

   He stood there until the doors swung open twenty minutes later and the worshippers came out in their summer dresses and seersucker suits. Sargent appeared midflock, his wife on his arm. They paused on the top step, looked up at the glorious day.

   It was Rose who saw Odd and Harry. She raised her hand to greet them, tugged on Sargent's coat sleeve, pointed at Odd. They made their way through the departing throng and joined Odd on the sidewalk.

   "Mister Eide, to what do we owe the pleasure?"

   "Mornin', Harald. Missus Sargent."

   "This must be little Harald," Rose said, peeking under the buggy's canopy.

"That's Harry. Sleeping his fool head off."

   Sargent lit a cigarette. "Rebekah's catching up on her own sleep, I gather?"

   "I couldn't rightly tell you what Rebekah's doing."

   Sargent arched his eyebrows. "Mother, see if you can talk to Pastor Guenther about the bake sale next week, would you?"

   She turned a sympathetic eye to Odd. "Mister Eide, it was very nice to see you. And this lovely little boy. What an angel!"

   "He is that," Odd said. "He's that if he's nothing else."

   The two men watched Rose head back up the church steps. Watched as she took the pastor's arm and headed inside the church again.

   Sargent offered Odd a cigarette, which he took and lit and pulled the smoke in. As he exhaled he said, "Rebekah's gone, Harald. Just up and left."

   "What are you saying? Where did she go?"

   "I have my suspicions about where she went off to, but I couldn't say for sure. Harry here woke up howling this morning and his mama was gone. That's about it."

   "She didn't say where she was going?"

   Odd looked at him as though to suggest the question was ridiculous.

   "What about the boy?"

   "The boy's the problem. Or a big part of the problem." Odd tried to gather himself, tried to understand why he was there with Sargent. "It's a complicated business, Harald. It's a sight more than complicated, to tell the truth. Rebekah, she was never keen about having the baby. She was scared and confused. Didn't think she'd know what to do once he came." He paused, took a drag on his smoke.

   Sargent had those eyes set on Odd. Didn't even blink as he blew his own smoke out his nose. "Go on, son."

   "I guess she was right. See, she was an orphan. We're both orphans, if you want the truth. I suppose she never saw a child being cared for. Never saw how a mother's supposed to act. Anyway."

   "Do you mean to suggest that she's gone for good? That she doesn't want to have anything to do with the boy?"

   Odd nodded his head.

   "That's impossible. A mother can't abandon her child that way."

   "Rebekah always had a mind of her own. But I've got a mind of my own, too. I got imagination enough to take care of the boy. Why, hell, just this morning I mashed up some blueberries to feed him. Ate 'em up like that milk from the bub was a long-forgotten thing." Odd tried to smile as though his cleverness was enough. It wasn't. He felt tears welling.

   "Son, you can't feed a baby that age blueberries. He needs his mother's milk. Some milk, leastways."

   "He ain't never supping at that teat again."

   Sargent looked up at the stained-glass window of the church for a long while. Long enough he finished his smoke. He dropped it and rubbed it out with the sole of his shoe, then said, "Are you sure you're not the cause of her leaving, Odd?"

   "What do you mean?"

   "Did you ever raise your hand against her?"

   "Hell, no."

   "Did you ever berate her? Demean her?"

   "I was never anything but kind and true, Harald. I love her better than anything."

   "But she'll come back, son. She can't really leave the boy. Can't leave a man good as you."

   "She can and she did, and she ain't coming back. I don't know much, but I know this."

   Sargent brought his hands together and hung his head. "Dear Lord, forgive that woman. Forgive her and find peace for her. And for this child, Lord, hold him in your hands. Show him the way." He lifted his face to the sunlight for a moment, then looked again at Odd. "Son, you know you've got a place with me as long as you need. Mother, she can watch the boy until you find other arrangements. I'll call Doctor Crumb. We'll find the boy a wet nurse. Everything will be all right."