All Over Creation (7 page)

Cass sat at the main computer, which they used for business, accounting, e-mail, and running the global-positioning-system software. In front of her, printouts of GPS maps were tacked to the wall, showing topographical and yield data from previous years' harvests, and beside them hung a USDA Potato Disorder Identification Chart with color photos of every affliction that might befall a spud. The cell phone that Will used when he was out in the field was resting in its charger. There were several land-line phones as well, one with a headset that Will wore during office hours. Cass had bought him the headset when he started getting neckaches. She thought he looked cute with it on.

“Like a receptionist.” She sat on his lap and adjusted the mouthpiece, then pulled the rubber band off his ponytail, combing her fingers through his blond hair so it hung loose around his shoulders. “There.”

“I feel like a goddamned stockbroker.” He dumped her off and ambled back into the kitchen for a refill on his coffee. The wire from the headset dangled over his shoulder. “I didn't become a farmer to sit behind a desk.”

Cass checked her watch. Will would be annoyed if he knew she was surfing the Net again. He thought it was a waste of time and couldn't understand why she'd want to spend a minute more in front of the computer than she absolutely had to. At least this was legitimate.

She typed “Yumi Fuller, Hawaii” into the search engine. A list of course offerings came back from various institutions including the University of Hawaii, a continuing-education program, a high-school-equivalency night school, and a local prison. All taught by Yumi Fuller, M.A.

Cass checked the descriptions of some of the classes: Introduction to the Novel, Composition Level I, Japanese Poetry in Translation, Creative Non-fiction. There was no information on how to contact the instructor, but Cass felt she was getting close.

She went back to the search engine and on a whim typed in “Yummy Fuller.” The engine transported her to another real estate site.

 

A list of properties followed, modest quarter-acre lots in a subdivision, built on what looked like the bare rock of a cooled lava flow.

 

A woman with long dark hair smiled ruefully from the corner of the home page. She was wearing a crown of flowers on her head. Cass stared at the picture, but it was small and indistinct, and she couldn't be sure.

There was a “Contact Me” button, so Cass clicked it and started to type. “I am looking for Yumi (Yummy) Fuller, originally from Liberty Falls, Idaho. Her dad is dying, and her mom needs help. If you are her, could you please contact me at [email protected]. P.S. I am her old friend and next-door neighbor Cassie Unger.”

She sent off this e-mail. Then she addressed an envelope to Professor Yumi Fuller, M.A., at the University of Hawaii.

 

Dear Professor Fuller,

I am looking for Yumi (Yummy) Fuller of Liberty Falls, Idaho. If this is you, it has been a long time since we have communicated. I am writing to you to tell you some sad news, that your father, Lloyd Fuller, had another heart attack—I think this is his third or fourth one now, but I lost count—and what with the colostomy (they found a bit of cancer there a couple years ago, too), well, the doctor says now his condition isn't very good. Although he has always been lucky and beaten the odds, the doctor thinks he may only have another couple of months or so left to him. Your mother, Momoko, is well, physically speaking, but she seems to have a touch of the dementia. I guess maybe it is Alzheimer's disease or she had a mild stroke, which is what happened to my father, although his stroke was a big one that killed him. (My mother is deceased as well, from breast cancer.)

I tracked you down on the Internet from the letters you sent to your mother and I hope you don't mind that I am writing to you out of the blue. I just thought you should know about your mother and father, and maybe you would like to come home now to say good-bye. I just hope this letter finds you in time.

“I think I found her,” Cass whispered, climbing into bed.

“On the Internet?” Will was half asleep.

“I think so. I found two. I just hope one of them is her.” She pointed her toes and nudged them between Will's shins. She eased her cold fingers under his armpits.

“Ow,” he muttered. “Cold.”

“I sent an e-mail and wrote a letter. I didn't say anything about taking care of them. I just said maybe she should come home and say good-bye.”

“Mmm. That's good.”

“Bet she won't, though. It's been so long.” She curled against Will's warm chest. “What do you think?”

“Dunno,” Will mumbled, trying to stay awake, to oblige her desire for conversation. “What happened back then anyway?”

“She had an affair with one of our teachers at school. Her daddy found out. She was only fourteen, and you know how Lloyd is. So she ran away. Started a spell of bad luck for Lloyd. For everyone, really. That's all I know.”

He nodded, and as he drifted back toward sleep, his hand reached for her like a blind mole, burrowing in the dark. His touch was not deliberate. Just an aimless sort of probing into adjacent soil, down the slope of her hip, up the rib cage. It was this random meandering across her body's terrain that first uncovered the pea-size lump. Now his fingers stiffened when they touched her chest.

“Cass.” He sighed. He placed the heel of his palm against the slick twist of scar tissue. His fingers groped for heft, for bulk.

But Cass intercepted him, smoothly capturing his wrist as she counted the days. It was early, but you never knew. She guided his hand to her stomach and released it. He was safe down there, no danger. From there he could find his own way. She relaxed into him now, began to let herself answer.
A little window of life.
She tried to visualize the sperms swarming her egg, picture them coming together. It wasn't always easy, but she knew it was important to keep positive images in your head.

 

 

“What's this?”

“You asked me what she was like.”

Will took the photos from the freezer bag and flipped through them. There was a picture of Lloyd, holding an infant Yummy in the palm of his hand, making her fly like an airplane. There was an Easter picture of Yummy in front of the church and another holding on to Momoko's hand in front of hedges of honeysuckle and mock orange.

“Cute.” He handed them back to Cass. “What's that one?” It was a group photo, taken at school after the Thanksgiving pageant.

“Are you in it?” Will asked.

Cass nodded. He narrowed his eyes, held the photo closer.

“Which one is you?”

She pointed to the edge, where she was standing amid the side dishes.

Will laughed. “Well, if you don't make the cutest, plumpest little—”

“Don't,” Cass warned.

He walked out to the office, still laughing.

Cass was in two other photos as well. The first had been taken at a birthday party, Yummy's, of course. Yummy was perched on a footstool in the center of the picture, surrounded by balloons and offerings. Cass sat on the horsehair love seat at the edge of the frame, so far over, it seemed like an accident that she'd gotten into the picture at all. The colors had faded. Pale balloons stuck to the wall behind the love seat, held there by static electricity. It had seemed like magic at the time, Cass remembered, but Lloyd had explained it using simple science. Friction. He'd rubbed a balloon against his thigh, and the sound of the taut rubber against the fabric of his trousers made her want to sneeze. The rough upholstery prickled the backs of her thighs. When the photo was snapped, the rest of the children were facing away. Just Cass and Yummy were caught looking toward the flash. Yummy smiled, poised and self-possessed. Cass, to one side, simply looked stricken.

The only other picture with Cass showed the two girls, older and in two-piece bathing suits, slouching splay-legged in aluminum lawn chairs on the Fullers' front yard. Behind them the lawn sprinkler sent jets of water into the air. Blades of wet grass stuck to their legs, and they were eating Popsicles. Yummy glowered at the camera, and again Cass just looked scared.

Cass placed the photos side by side. Lined up like that, you could see the sea change that had transpired in Yummy—from smiling princess to sullen mermaid, hiding behind damp, seaweedy hair. Cass hadn't changed at all. Not yet. Her changes had come later. She stared at the pictures, points in time, and felt the years swell.

Will came from the office, on his way out to the fields. “Looks like fun,” he said, peering over her shoulder. “You two were pretty good buddies, huh?”

She nodded. She walked him to the door and watched him cross the yard, bundled against the cold.

She had thought time would just go on, generating more pictures like these: Cass and Yummy, dressed in bathing suits, in prom dresses, as brides and bridesmaids, and then at baby showers. But the images of her friend stopped a year or so after the photo on the lawn. By then it was winter, and Cass was squirming on the love seat again. No one was snapping pictures. There were no balloons or magic, and the electricity in the room was no longer simply static.

 

 

They were all in the Fullers' living room: Cassie, her mother and father, Lloyd and Momoko. Everyone except for Yummy.

“I don't know about you, Fuller, but I won't abide obstinacy in a child of mine.” Her daddy unbuckled his belt. “For the last time, Cassandra, what were you two girls doing in town? And what was that man doing with you?”

“Where's Yumi, Cass?” Lloyd urged.

“Yes, please tell,” said Momoko.

But she stayed silent.

“All right,” her daddy said. “Have it your way. Get outside and wait for me.”

Her mother reached up and touched his arm. “Carl, not here.”

He jerked his arm away like he hadn't heard. “What are you waiting for? I said git.”

Lloyd spoke again. “Carl, wait . . .”

“You got a better idea?” It wasn't a question.

“Not in my house.”

“Don't you worry. I'm takin' her outside.”

“That's not what I meant. It's not right—”

“That's why your girl's gone running off, Fuller. And I'm going to make real sure mine don't do likewise.”

Outside, it was cold, and the moon lit the slick, vast stretch of ice-crusted snow. The farmhouse stood all alone in the middle of it, glowing. Her daddy's breath turned white as it came from his mouth. Maybe the cold just made him madder, because he went on and on, raising the belt and bringing it down, like he was doing it just to keep warm.

After a while Lloyd came out and stood in the lit doorway.

“That's enough, Unger,” he called. “I mean it.”

But her daddy just kept on going, the leather whistling in the air, and except for the action of his arm and the belt, it was like everything else was frozen and would stay that way forever.

April 1976

 

Dear Momoko and Lloyd,

I decided to write this letter even though I don't think it will do any good. You probably still think I'm an evil sinner and I'll go to hell for all my wrongdoings, and if that causes you grief, I'm sorry. It's not your fault. I didn't mean for you to find out. It was
my
problem, and I took care of it the only way I knew how.

Maybe you're mad at me for leaving, too. But I had to. I left for reasons of shame—not mine, which is what you probably hope, but yours, Daddy. Do you remember when that ammonia train car derailed over behind the Ungers? And all the stuff went into the air and we all had to evacuate, and how scared we were because the poisonous gas was going everywhere, on every wind, but you couldn't see it? That's what it was going to be like. I could tell that your shame was going to fill every crack in the house, seep into every second of the day, and suck the air right out of me. And when the word got around, there wasn't going to be any room left for me to breathe in the whole of Power County that wasn't taken up with your shame. It wasn't fair. You might think that the poison was in me, Daddy, but you'd be wrong. I was just the derailed train car. The shame was yours, and I knew if I stayed, I'd be poisoned by it. I'd grow up all screwy and bent with the weight of your shame. So I left. It was an evacuation, Daddy.