Lila: A Novel (31 page)

He said, “
Family
is a prayer.
Wife
is a prayer.
Marriage
is a prayer.”

“Baptism is a prayer.”

“No,” he said. “Baptism is what I’d call a fact.”

“Because you can’t just wash it off.”

He laughed. “Nope. Not with all the water in the West Nishnabotna.”

Well. So he knew what she’d done, unbaptizing herself. She probably had that river smell all over her that afternoon and he figured it out when she asked him later. And now the river was frozen and snowed under, and she wished she could see it, all pillowed like that, tucked in. By the time it thawed she would have her body to herself and she could walk in it barefoot if she wanted to, on those slippery rocks. She and Mellie used to pretend they were herding minnows, with their pant legs rolled up above their knees and wet anyway. Here she was, forgetting that there would be a child. It frightened her when she forgot. She must have started awake.

“What?” he said. The worrying had worn him out. He gave a sermon once about the disciples sleeping at Gethsemane because they were weary with grief. Sleep is such a mercy, he said. It was a mercy even then.

“I’ve just never had the care of a child.”

“We’ll be fine.” He nestled against her. That sound of settling into the sheets and the covers has to be one of the best things in the world. Sleep is a mercy. You can feel it coming on, like being swept up in something. She could see the light in the room with her eyes closed, and she could smell the snow on the air drifting in. You had to trust sleep when it came or it would just leave you there, waiting.

She was thinking about the spring, how clear and stinging cold the water would be with snow still on the rocks and the sandbars. And summer. She might take the baby with her to the river. Little as it would be. Just to pick a few raspberries. And she might put it down in the grass by the road, just for a minute, just while she was picking berries. And then she forgot to come back soon enough, how long was she gone? and had to put it in a pail of river water because you never know. He would say, Why did you do this? Looking at her as if he didn’t recognize her at all.

That woke her up. Her first thought was, I have to get that knife off the table. She’d been having her worst dream, with the Reverend’s arm carefully across her where her waist would be, with the Reverend breathing at her ear. She thought, There’s a whole world of water in the West Nishnabotna. It’s not the Mississippi, but it never begins and it never ends.
Wife
is a prayer. Because I’m his wife. I better think about that.

Sometimes when they were together in the kitchen, when he was drinking his coffee and reading the newspaper, he would fiddle with that knife, taking it up in his hand. He might have done the same with a piece of driftwood, with any harmless thing, just feeling how smooth it was, the shape wear had given it. She never got used to seeing it in his hand, but she never said a word about it except one time when he opened the blade. She said, “Maybe you shouldn’t do that,” and was surprised herself when she heard the words. She said, “It’s awful sharp,” thinking probably that the knife was like a snake, that it was in its nature to do harm if you trifled with it. She used to keep it by her when she slept, open, stuck into the floor so she could just grab it if she needed to. It was such a mean-looking thing, and if she had ever used it on anybody it would have been the knife that did it, because it was that kind of knife. Some dogs bite. So you keep them away from people. You can’t just get rid of them for being the way they are. And now and then you can be glad to have them around, to snarl the way a good dog never does.

Say she took that knife away, put it out of sight. Would he notice and wonder what it meant? Would he ask her what she had done with it, look for it in her dresser drawer? Under her pillow? Could she put it anywhere at all that he might not just come across it and think, This is strange, why has she hidden it here? She had thought it through a hundred times. That knife was the difference between her and anybody else in the world. Ugly old Doll hunched over in the firelight, spitting on her bit of whetstone, sharpening and wearing the blade till the edge of it curved like a claw, readying herself for whatever fearful thing she turned over in her mind while she was working at it. And, knowing that the fearful thing might take even Doll, who stole her and carried her away from whatever she could have had of place and name and kin, Lila watched her, hoping the knife would take on the witchy deadliness she was conjuring for it.

Fear and comfort could be the same thing. It was strange, when she thought of it. The wind always somewhere, trifling with the leaves, troubling the firelight. And that smell of damp earth and bruised grass, a lonely, yearning sort of smell that meant, Why don’t you come back, you will come back, you know you will. And then the stars, and Mellie probably awake, lying there thinking about them.

Lila could tell by the smell that the sheets had frozen on the clothesline. Then Mrs. Graham or whoever had the time had ironed them. But there was still that good, cold smell that made her think of the air after a lightning storm. New air, if there was such a thing, that the rain brought down, or the snow. She was still the preacher’s bride, and those women still starched her pillowcase, blessing his happiness, praying for it. All those years of his loneliness were a weight on their hearts. Then he took a wife and he fathered a child, even if it wasn’t born yet, and what else could they do? What more could they do? It made her think of the old days, when she lived her whole life just for the hours she spent at the movies, when everybody in the audience would sigh and weep and laugh for those beautiful ghosts in that unreachable place where people lived lives strangers could care about. She had a dream once that a woman’s giant face turned and her giant eyes stared at her, and Lila was scared to death because, sitting there in the dark, nobody along with everybody else, she knew she was real to that woman. The look meant, Should I know you? as if to say, Who are you to be watching me like that? Now here she was under the covers with this man anybody in Fremont County knew better than she did, knew when he was first a married man and a father. All of them probably wondered now and then how the two of them passed the time together, what in the world they could find to talk about, different as they were. All of them thinking how sad any sadness that came to him would be, how sweet any happiness, the poor old fellow. And here they were, the two of them, waking and sleeping through the long afternoon, in the crisp sheets that smelled like snow, the baby stirring a little sometimes, the old man young in his sleep and his comfort and she as still as could be, wanting nothing. Those women, looking on at their life, would say oh, and ah, when the curtains stirred and let whiter light into the pale room. Doll there, too, watching. Damn that knife.

She said, “We got to do something with that damn knife.”

He said, “I suppose.” She could tell by his voice he’d been awake for a while, lying still, too. “It’s handy to have around, though. Good for paring apples.”

“You been using my knife to pare apples?” She’d have turned to look him in the eye, except for the heft of her belly.

“Once or twice.”

“I never said you could use it.”

“Sorry. I don’t think I did it any harm. I believe you said you used to use it to clean fish.”

“That’s different.” Why was it different? Because it was the only knife she had. And she never slit a fish without thinking she hated the need to use it that way. Hating the need almost made it seem all right. Besides, it was a kind of a little murder, gutting a fish, so when she did it she thought back over her life, and there was something to that. The knife was a potent thing. Other people had houses and towns and names and graveyards. They had church pews. All she had was that knife. And dread and loneliness and regret. That was her dowry. Other women brought quilts and china. Even a little money sometimes. She brought hard hands and a face she could barely bring herself to look at in a mirror because her life was just written all over it. And that knife.

But thinking about her life was another thing. Lying there in that room in that house in that quiet town she could choose what her life had been. The others were there. The world was there, evening and morning. No matter what anybody thought, no matter if she only tagged after them because they let her. That sweet nowhere. If the world had a soul, that was it. All of them wandering through it, never knowing anything different or wanting anything more.

Well, that wasn’t true, either.

But one time she and Mellie cut across a field, and just beyond it there was a little valley, budding cottonwood trees letting morning light pass right through, new ferns and new grass all bright with it. In a few days it would be the valley of the shadow, but that day there were only traces of shade, the light just blooming, dandelion yellow in all that green. When you see something like that, it doesn’t seem like anything you’ve ever seen before. She and Mellie were whispering. It would be their valley. They’d think of a secret name for it. Soon enough they heard Doane calling for them, and they had to leave it behind, and it felt like a broken promise when they did.

Remembering always felt almost guilty, a lingering where there was no cause to linger, as if whatever you loved had a claim on you and you couldn’t help feeling it no matter what. There was nothing to do but leave, and still. That Mack. There was a time when she would have been so glad if he’d asked her for anything at all. If he had said one word to her, there in the street that day. The old man always pretended he was worried that some fellow would show up at the door. When she told him there was nobody coming for her, Mack was that nobody. She could just see the smile on his face, him standing at the Reverend’s door, his eyes all sly with the evil he was doing. He’d have his hands on his hips, looking around at the neighborhood as if he couldn’t quite believe people really lived that way. Cigarette hanging out of his mouth, laughing to himself. No decent man would look at every single thing in the world as if it had a price tag on it and he knew it wasn’t worth half that much because he could see what the paint hid, where the rot was. He’d flip his cigarette into the bushes and say, So it’s Mrs. Ames now, and laugh. He’d say, Good to see you, Rosie, hardly looking at her, and light up another cigarette and glance away from her like anything else would be more interesting, because nothing had changed at all. She’d probably shut the door on him, and then if he left she’d be thinking about him more than she usually did.

Or he might sit down on the step to finish his smoke, and if the old man happened to come walking up from the church, he’d tell him he was looking for a little work. If he happened to get a lift out of town, people always appreciate a dollar or two to help pay for the gas. The Reverend would nod, he could do something or other around the place, and he would say, Thanks, smiling, and then as soon as the old man had come inside to look for his wallet he would drift away because it was a lie that he wanted work or money. He would have said a few words to the old man just to make her worry about what he might say. He’d have been sitting there smoking, his back to her, making sure she remembered that the two of them were not strangers and never would be, either. That’s just how it is. If she ever saw that child of Missy’s, it would be the child she’d hoped to steal. No matter that it had never seen her face. If she heard it was in trouble, she would say, Come here to me, then. I used to dream I’d have you to comfort. That’s how I kept myself alive for a while one time.

You. What a strange word that is. She thought, I have never laid eyes on you. I am waiting for you. The old man prays for you. He almost can’t believe he has you to pray for. Both of us think about you the whole day long. If I die bearing you, or if you die when you are born, I will still be thinking, Who are you? and there will be only one answer out of all the people in the world, all the people there have ever been or will ever be. If we find each other in heaven, we’ll say, So there you are! We’d be perfect in heaven, no regrets, no grudges, nothing to make you turn a cold eye on me the way you might do someday when you’re old enough to really see me. When I tell you that that knife is the only thing I have to leave you. Then I’d be all hard and proud, like it didn’t even matter what you thought. What else can a person do? And it would be the only thing that mattered, because no one else could say “you” and mean the same thing by it. But there would be years when the child would just want to sit on her lap. He’d favor her over anybody. He’d be crying and she’d pick him up, and then it would take him a minute to be done crying, but that would be all that was left of it, because she had her arms around him. Comfort. That’s strange, too. When she used to lie there almost asleep, with her cheek on the old man’s sweater, the night all around her chirping and whispering, the comfort of it was a thing she’d have promised herself the whole day long.

Thinking that way made her want to turn onto her back, to feel how good it was to be lying there, her body resting at a kind of simmer, the baby nudging a little, just so she’d know it was there. She could feel her body resting, the way you can tell that a cat asleep in the sun knows it’s sleeping. The pleasure of it is just too good to go to waste. When she stirred, the old man sat up out of the covers. “Night!” he said. “Well. I guess the wind has died down. We slept through supper. How are you feeling? Can I get you a sandwich?” He fumbled for his glasses. It always took him a minute to collect himself. That’s what he would say. Let me collect myself. Give me a minute here. Everything seemed strange when she thought about it. Where had he been? Nowhere at all, even lying there beside her. His hair was all pushed to one side, that longer hair that was meant to hide his baldness a little. He looked as though he had waked out of a dream, or into one, that made him feel he had to do something important and couldn’t take the time to figure out what it was.

“You,” she said.