Authors: Mary Morris
Acts of God (35 page)
Or my father, who was a good storyteller and a charming man, but a liar all the same. I forgave him long ago. Or at least I've made my peace with him. I've come to pity Margaret because she waited all those years for a father who would never come. I wished she'd had another father; if only she hadn't wanted mine. I can still see him, dipping into those dark shadows under the railroad trestle and coming out into the sun. Then putting the radio on, singing out loud. His fingers tapping on the wheel.
I've stopped calling Nick. He doesn't return my calls. With time he might come around, but I'm not waiting. I'm going about my business. I'm going to open my B-and-B next season and the kids have agreed, all things being equal, it's probably the best thing. There'll be all kinds of people coming in and out, interesting people from other places. The place won't have this dank, empty feel much longer.
But then something frightens me and I'm not quite sure what it is. I feel it in the air around me. And then I know. I am afraid because Margaret could just show up again, right here. I think of how Margaret was always showing up at our houses, uninvited, searching for what she had lost long ago and would never replace. And though I know this is impossible, it feels as if I am expecting her.
Just the other day I rented the seashell house to a young couple from the Midwest who came highly recommended. They kept oohhing and aahhing and laughing over the accoutrements of the houseâthe mirror framed in cowrie shells, the shell-shaped sofaâand when I agreed with them that it was an eclectic place, they just started laughing again. Eclectic, they said, then started to laugh. Everything is funny when you are young and in love.
Afterward when I got home, things didn't seem quite where I'd left them. A sweater I hadn't remembered wearing was draped over a chair. A book I wasn't reading was off the shelf. But more than these small things (for Jade could easily go rummaging through my things), the house felt as if someone had been there.
I needed to be outside. I took my usual walk along the dunes, the Poet's Walk, I've come to call it (I've even made a little sign), the path he blazed with his grief, strolling among the ice plants, up and down the cliffs. I peered down at the hunchback tree that had inspired some of Francis Eagger's poems, still struggling to grow on the bluff it had slipped down, that same bluff that would eventually erode its way to my house. But hopefully that was years or decades from now.
I was glad to be outside, collecting pine cones and shells. The air was fresh and I roamed for a long time. The roar of the surf was soothing and I followed the paths along the cliffs. I found a red feather, which I kept. I wandered until the sun began to set. Then a chill came into the air as the wind from the ocean picked up. I was starting to shiver and I had no choice but to turn around and go home.
When I got back, it was just after dusk and I couldn't get warm. I sat up in an armchair in the living room near the hearth, though it had no fire. In a few months I'd rarely be alone in this house. Soon it would be filled with guests, strangers stopping on their way somewhere else. People with their own stories to tell about what has happened in their lives.
I was still cold so I grabbed the Winonah centennial blanket from the back of the chair and tossed it over my legs. The high school, “Home of the Winonah Wildcats,” and the train station rested across my lap. Here I was, once more, ensconced in the past. It was time, I thought, to put it away. I took the blanket, folded it, placed it on the top of the linen closet.
Someday I would take it down again, but for now I tucked the blanket in the back of the closet and grabbed a plain down comforterâone that cats had slept on and children had napped in. I wrapped it around my legs until the chill was gone.
I want to thank Caroline Leavitt and Larry O'Connor for their excellent critical advice. I also want to thank Julie and Ruediger Flik and Sarah Lawrence College for travel grants that enabled me to do research in California and Illinois, and Mary Jane Roberts and Jerry Evans, who shared their home and their knowledge of California insurance law. I want to thank the friends of my youth for all we've shared, Ellen Levine and Diana Finch for their invaluable input and support, and my editor, Diane Higgins at Picador, for her focused attention. And my daughter, Kate, who traveled the road with me.
Mary Morris
is the author of twelve books (including
Acts of God, The Night Sky,
and
House Arrest
), three collections of short stories, including
The Lifeguard,
and three travel memoirs, including
Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone
and
Angels & Aliens: A Journey West
(all available from Picador). Her numerous short stories and travel essays have appeared in The
Paris Review, The New York Times,
and
Vogue.
The recipient of the Rome Prize, Morris teaches writing at Sarah Lawrence College and lives in Brooklyn with her husband and daughter. You can sign up for email updates
here
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Also by
Mary Morris
FICTION
Vanishing Animals
The Bus of Dreams
The Waiting Room
NONFICTION
Nothing to Declare: Memoirs of a Woman Traveling Alone
Wall to Wall: From Beijing to Berlin by Rail
Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers
Angels and Aliens: A Journey West
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Contents
ACTS OF GOD
. Copyright © 2000 by Mary Morris. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Picador USA, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Grateful acknowledgment is given to quote from “Small World” by Stephen Sondheim and Jule Styne. © 1959 Norbeth Productions Inc. and Stephen Sondheim.
Copyright renewed. All rights administered by Chappell & Co. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, FL 33014.
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eISBN 9781250102751
First eBook edition: September 2015