Farthest House (23 page)

For comfort, Willow glanced at the paintings on her wall. “Mary’s dad blamed Sister Dominic Agnes, too? And she believed him? That explains so much.” She sank against the soft chair back, considering. A question came to mind, and for a moment she was afraid to ask. “How do you know this? Did Father Steinhouse tell you?”

The eyes of Derrick’s mother leveled. “That man has been a great help to me. Why does everyone think that’s wrong? He came to the hospital when I needed someone. Every morning since then, he’s taken the time after Mass to talk to me. He’s the only one willing to listen to me and forgive me. My own husband hasn’t.” Her thoughts were jagged sparks of shooting energy. She remembered the morning months after the accident, her bandages freshly off, and with her scarred hands she buttered her husband’s toast, just as she did mornings before the accident. Proud of what she’d done, she pushed it across the table to him. He’d watched as she struggled with the knife, the scarred hands on his food. He looked at his toast and pushed the plate back.

“You started doing paint-by-number crucifixion pictures.”

“Father Steinhouse has them hanging. They were gifts from him. Painting those little numbered spaces and opening those little pots of paint were physical therapy. The work helped keep my mind busy, and the pictures reminded me that my suffering was less than Christ’s.” She began working her gloves back on. “The state I was in, each finished painting was an accomplishment. I’d gotten through another month, maybe two, and I wanted him to have them.”

For so long, Willow had longed for answers, and now that she had so many, she wanted to be alone. She turned to check the time, hoping it would serve as a hint, but the dark windows caught her attention, not the clock. Tiny icy pellets ticked against the glass.

“After the accident,” Mrs. Crat went on, “I was hospitalized, too, and went back and forth from my room to Mary’s. I went to the cafeteria for candy, ice cream, to the gift shop for stuffed toys, anything to take her mind off the pain and the awful bandaging and rebandaging every few days, the grafting,” she shuddered. “I didn’t leave her alone with Sally. How could I trust that woman? My hands and the pain, while Sally’s hands were pretty as ever. She polished her nails to visit the hospital. I’d earned my place by Mary, and she wanted me there. If her father came, she’d cry until he left. I shouldn’t have come between them, but he threw her at me, and she was like a little, broken angel.

“I wanted Derrick and Mary to be together. We owed her that. I told myself he loved her, but I suppose he could have hated her for taking me away from him.” She stopped again, her face knitting and fretting, but she needed to say more. “You didn’t come between them. It was me, insisting Mary was the one, not letting Derrick feel as though he had a say in the matter. I didn’t see who else would marry her. My husband was rejecting me; I didn’t want that for her. It wasn’t Derrick’s life I thought you ruined, it was Mary’s.”

Willow watched the last of Mrs. Crat’s scarring disappear inside her soft, black gloves. The woman wasn’t evil, and being honest enough to admit she cared more about Mary than her own son took courage.

The damp boots shuffled on the floor. “I don’t wonder that he watched you. We all did. You were mixed up with everything, and we were desperate to blame an outsider. When I learned you were pregnant, I cried for days. I knew I’d failed Mary and that Derrick hooked up with you as a way to hurt me.”

Remembering nights in Derrick’s car and his urgency in wrestling her out of her jeans, Willow was certain he hadn’t been thinking about his mother.

“I’d have celebrated Mary getting pregnant and their marriage.”

“So, why did you push him to marry me?”

She shrugged, as if no longer certain. “Our family name. Father Steinhouse believed it was God’s will. My dream for Mary seemed ruined by your pregnancy. Even if Derrick didn’t marry you, there was still going to be a child. And,” for the first time her lips curled, then tipped down as she shook her head, “we were certain it would be a boy and need a strong name. Crats always have boys. My husband is one of six brothers. The brothers all have boys.”

A slow, hot burn threatened to make Willow scream, but at the same time she knew Mrs. Crat’s Neanderthal thinking meant Prairie was safe. Had Prairie been male, the Crats would be trying to take her.

“Even after you threw Derrick out,” Mrs. Crat continued, “I needed to concentrate on Mary. I couldn’t have your baby around. I just never knew what Mary might do.”

“That’s why you’ve had nothing to do with her? Her being a girl and your fear Mary would harm her? Did you also tell Derrick to stay away, or did he decide that?”

“Trying to share custody from Texas wouldn’t be practical.”

“Practical,” Willow managed, “of course it wouldn’t be.” And after a moment, “Are you saying Derrick went to Texas to get away from Mary?”

“I don’t think Mary really tried to hurt him, certainly not to kill him, like she said. I’m sure she wouldn’t actually hurt your child, either. That day, I believe, she flirted with suicide, trying to show Derrick she’d really do it.”

“Suicide?” She remembered Mary slapping her chest, going crazy over Papa and Derrick seeing her scars. “And she threatened to hurt Prairie?” The window moaned again. “You came to warn me?” She couldn’t stay sitting. She stood and paced back and forth behind her chair. “Yesterday and again this morning, I saw flashes of a yellow car at the end of the street. Does she still drive her convertible?”

“It was her father’s car she wrecked. I just don’t know, without me being here for her. I must go, though. I’m no use to her.”

Willow didn’t need to hear more. She stepped back from the chair and motioned to the bedroom door. “You’re here and leaving for Texas. Do you at least want to see Prairie?”

“That’s really the name you chose?” She stood, pulled her scarf up, and headed for the door leading out. “She’s sleeping. Let’s not wake her.”

“Is that why you came now? Because you supposed she’d be napping?”

The cheeks, just visible behind the wool scarf, turned florid. “I came now because of the storm. I want to get home before the ice hits.”

You are the ice,
Willow thought
.
“You may not like me, but you’re Prairie’s only grandmother.”

Mrs. Crat’s brows yanked inward again. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, haven’t you got
any
family?”

Willow didn’t watch her walk down the hall. She shut the door as soon as the woman was outside and slid the deadbolt into place with extra force. It would take days to unpack all she’d learned, but a few facts were clear: The months of quiet she’d experienced were because Derrick was in Texas and Mary was in the hospital. Her behavior was so dangerous, or suicidal, it warranted locking her up. Now, she was out and making new threats against Prairie.

Picking up the envelope, she stared at the name again, Crat Construction. She opened it and removed a $50 dollar bill. Her heart sank, and then she laughed. Just as quickly, the window squealed, and her stomach fell again. The apartment felt as if Mrs. Crat had left something evil behind.

Willow opened the door to where Prairie slept and slowly crawled up the bed. She pulled the baby blanket up tighter over Prairie’s small shoulders and then wrapped herself in Mother Moses. With birds and butterflies around her, she watched Prairie and tried to calm herself. Prairie was safe, and Papa would be there soon, ice or no ice. Everything was all right. Wasn’t it?

29

“You’ve got to stay the night,” Willow said to Julian. She nodded toward the sofa Mrs. Crat vacated only a few hours earlier. “I’ll sleep there, and you can have the bed.”

He sat over his second serving of tuna casserole, eating as though the dish were a rare favorite and holding Prairie on one knee. “There’ll be a heap of accidents in that ice. Red’ll be out all night,” he said. Then, wistfully, “Glad it isn’t me.”

“Sure you are.”

He kissed Prairie again on the top of her curly head and looked at the paintings on the wall. Tonight, they arrested him more than did the weather. He pointed with his fork. “You want to try and explain all this to me?”

He hadn’t asked before. He had admired them and often joked about her “museum,” but this time Willow sensed he was asking for some deeper connection. He was nervous, or extra lonely, or feeling the gray she’d been feeling since Mrs. Crat’s visit. Explaining the paintings though would have to include the story of the morning she watched smoke rising from his cigarette, the rose M
é
m
é
sent to her wedding, and the thorns she stabbed into her arm. Those wounds, infected for a week, left puffy scars she still carried. And how to explain paintings she only really understood while in the act of creation? Afterwards, she lacked the language.

Julian put down his fork. “They lived in simpler times.”

“Derrick’s mom came to see me today.”

The hand Julian kept around Prairie’s waist tightened. He watched Willow, his eyes some combination of wanting to hear the details and already expecting the worst.

“She came to warn me. Mary is out of the hospital. You knew her father blamed me, at least partially, for her burns. All these years, you’ve never said a thing.”

“The man ain’t worth the effort.”

Willow carried their plates to the sink. Half an inch of ice coated the ledge where pigeons roosted in the summer. No cars crawled along the street below, which was good because Papa wouldn’t slide into anyone, but bad because it proved just how treacherous the streets were. “Please stay the night.”

“I can still get myself two blocks.”

He didn’t hurry home. He built block tower after block tower for Prairie to knock down, her laughter like a cascade that kept him laughing, too. When finally Prairie was asleep, he took up his coat, and despite Willow’s insistence, said good-night. She stood at a window, kneading the ache in her stomach and looking down on trees shiny with ice. He stepped from the building and avoided the slick sidewalk, moving to his car by way of the less-slippery grass, wind gusts billowing his coat and forcing him to lean into the cold, one bare hand holding his hat to his head. He’d lived his life on the seams and edges of society: the years he patrolled the night’s shadowy streets, the years spent with the ghost of Jeannie, the years as a wine-induced hermit with secrets he told no one. Even now, his figure looked less a father and a grandfather and more a man alone in a storm.

Uneasiness kept her at the glass, leaning into the cold pane, straining to see him creep up the block and the last smear of his taillights vanish.
Already half-way home and fine,
she promised herself.

She still hadn’t studied for the next day’s class, but it was likely to be canceled, and she felt too restless to concentrate on a book. The image of six-year-old Mary writhing on the floor wouldn’t leave her mind.

The pictures on her wall were all crones, even the young faces. They didn’t have hooknoses, warts, or toothless smiles. What they possessed was old wisdom, ancient female wisdom, and in that they were beautiful. Taking down a picture of Mémé, she set it on the easel. The cylinders and cubes of the face had already been worked into cheeks and chin and nose. The rough outline of a towering stack of books had already been sketched in as Mémé’s perch. An hour of work passed, and still Willow’s hand felt heavy, her strokes dull and more weeping daubs of color than fluid additions. She stepped away, looking at the painting from a few feet, then farther back.

“Move on,” her college art instructor said of her obsession with the portraits. “Try something new.” She’d tried, but bowls of fruit and dull landscapes didn’t excite her.

Taking in a deep breath, she tried to shake the tension from her hands. She went back to work. Gradually, her awareness of the apartment faded and even the sound of the sleet striking the windows vanished. Her hands began to move as though to the rhythm of music.

What happened next can best be described as a mental crash or bursting. That quick. One moment her paintbrush was in the air. In the next, she saw Julian, and the horror of the vision knocked the paintbrush from her hand. Papa was consumed in a column of flame.

She jerked toward the nearest window, but stood frozen, telling herself she couldn’t have seen what she imagined she saw. In the distance, the sound of sirens, no more than the whine of mosquitoes, touched her ears.
Too far away.
But growing slowly. She took deep breaths, the sound of emergency vehicles creeping on the ice, growing louder, finding their way into her body, rising up from her heels, turning her legs cold, mounting into wails that clawed the inside of her stomach and turned savage in her ears.

She still couldn’t approach the window. For the second time that day, she rushed first to Mother Moses, hurrying into the heavy crocheting as if hurrying into Mémé’s arms. Only then could she force herself forward, approaching the window as she had so many times since moving into the apartment, locating her childhood rooftop. Smoke and a bright orange glow.

She ran for Prairie, scooped her up, blankets and all, and stopped. Taking a warm and sleeping baby into the storm wasn’t just cruel, it was dangerous. She swung Mother Moses across the foot of the bed, added a second thick blanket to the crocheting and then Prairie. She had no other choice.

The bundle was nearly too bulky to carry, but Mother Moses was tied up with Mémé, and Willow needed that good spirit with them. On the street, she jostled her load, trying to jab her keys into her frozen car locks. The ice wouldn’t yield, and after several time-wasting attempts, she took off on foot. Cutting across lawns and between houses, the unwieldy bundle of Prairie and blankets made her running slow and clumsy. Her heart pounded through a surreal world: painted silver streets, grass looking like shards of glass, and the dark wash of ash and smoke rolling sickly over dark rooftops.

She didn’t feel the ice hitting her hands and face, but the wet cold soaked her sweatshirt and added to her stiff and erratic running. She fell twice, three times, taking the spills on her hip or elbow, believing Mother Moses controlled the trajectory of the falls, protecting Prairie who woke and cried and fought to get her head uncovered. “It’s all right,” Willow panted. “I’m right here. I’m right here.” Her voice ragged with terror and cold and exertion.

The screaming sirens quit as they reached the site. When Willow came between the houses across the street from her childhood home, she saw flashing lights and smoke billowing from the open front door. Behind the windows, flames leaped and fell, and then the quick dark shape of a man in thick protective gear.

“Stop!” A male voice rang out at her shoulder. Strong arms grabbed her. “Stay back.”

She wasn’t going any closer, not with Prairie, who at times made muffled crying sounds and at other times let out screams that sliced through the blankets.

“I’ve got her,” a familiar voice called out, his arms circling both Willow and her bundle. “Come on,” Red coaxed, “we’ll wait in my cruiser.”

She fought him, begging, as though he didn’t know Julian was inside, telling him they had to get Papa out, and just let her see, not hearing herself, not able to control the massive fear engulfing her. Red kept coaxing, steering her over the treacherous ice and away from the sound of breaking glass and groaning timbers.

When a fireman burst through the front door carrying a form over his shoulder, Willow nearly sank to her knees in relief.

I felt no relief. The past and the present engulfed me with their ashes and smoke. I arrived too late to save Little Nest from the fire that destroyed it. I stood back, watching it burn while firemen worked in vain. Through its destruction, I held a weeping Julian to my skirts, a boy terrorized by the power of the fire, too innocent to have ever imagined such hellish and quick destruction. Now, here again, was a house in the family burning down.