And Little Homer. He seemed the most like his old self of any of the children, but that was perhaps only because he wasn't all that old to begin with. Somehow he was the one who could still cheer Mae, if only because he hadn't stopped trying. He was the baby, and Mae knew he still needed her most. She was dependent on Ellis and Ruby's being older, on their needing her less. It hadn't yet occurred to Mae that her moods had actually made the children younger than they were.
No, it wasn't the storm that got us here, Lavinia thinks; the storm just blew us here quicker. Maybe things wouldn't have been so bad if the town hadn't been knocked down around us. Maybe I shouldn't have sold the farm so quick after Homer died. We could have hired help until Ellis and Little Homer were old enough to work it. Paul could have kept at the lumberyard, and driven into town instead. Maybe if John hadn't moved, that's what we would have done. The lumberyard was too much for Paul alone, living out on the farm. Maybe if John hadn't moved. But if you go that far back for blame, shouldn't you go further? Lavinia wonders. What if our people had never been farmers, what if they'd settled right away in a town? Someone two generations back could have started a lumberyard in Marah, for that matter, and John and Paul could have inherited something they wanted to work at, instead of inheriting a farm.
But if we hadn't sold out, we'd have been flattened with the rest of them, Lavinia thinks. The farm house and all the out-buildings went as flat as the fields around them during the storm. Lavinia's house. It wasn't the first house that had ever stood on the farm. It was Lavinia's father who'd torn down the small house he'd been born in and built a new one entirely of materials available on the farm. We could have done the same, she thinks. The storm didn't destroy any crops, coming so early in the year. We could have lived on everything we'd stored in the cellar, and Paul's a fair shot. We would have eaten. Then we could have rebuilt like they did before me, right over the old cellar. We could have fended for ourselves. It's not John's fault any more than it's the storm's, nor is it my Homer's for dying. Maybe it's just my fault, she thinks. I should have held out. But neither Paul nor John wanted to farm; they'd bolted as soon as they could and worked hard after they'd set up, so hard they'd paid Homer back his start money inside two years. It had seemed best to let go. And if they were busy rebuilding like the rest of the town, Mae wouldn't have time to stare out of windows. They'd all have been kept busy, even the children, with no time for reflection or self-pity or whatever it was they had all sunk into. They could have kept themselves focused on rebuilding, on making something out of nothing.
Lavinia is worn out, not least by Mae and Paul's stubbornness: Mae, in her withdrawal, and Paul, in surrendering to it. She realizes that not one of them has looked up since she entered the room, and turns away from the mirror to face them. They're not just occupied, she thinks, they're all pretending they're alone, even the children, hoping that no one will want to talk. She frowns, provoked and suddenly childish. Paul's not even reading behind that paper, she thinks. Wouldn't I just love to snatch it away from him right now. She looks at Ellis on the floor, concentrating, lost in making holes in his wood scraps with the hand drill.
“Take care you don't go through to the floor, now,” she says, watching Paul, who lowers his paper to see for himself, then raises it again and says, “Keep that wood on the cookie sheet.”
“I am!” Ellis cries, stung.
Lavinia takes her wing chair opposite Mae's. The fireplace behind the wing chairs is cold. They could do with a fire right now, for its cheer as much as any warmth, but they've all had enough of fires, she supposes. Little Homer has given up waiting for a turn with the hand drill and is jabbing a finger rhythmically into the repeats of the carpet pattern. Ruby is on the far end of the davenport, a book in her lap, chewing again on a lock of her hair.
“You don't have enough light there,” Lavinia says. Ruby replies, “Yes, I do, Gran,” without looking up. Well, no you don't, Lavinia thinks. The sun is down and the light outside is failing, but she won't be bothered to get up to switch on another light if no one else will. What on earth would Homer, her Homer, have made of this nonsense? Certainly, Lavinia can imagine him sitting there, looking around the room, taking their measure. She can imagine mild disgust crossing his face, his slippered feet flat on the floor and his hands on the ends of his chair's armrests, ready to haul himself up and tell everyone how things were going to be. She could do it herself, assume Homer's authority, make the pronouncements he would have made and expect them to be heard, but she's prevented by peevishness; a blazing indignation at having been left with both a widow's clarity and a matriarch's obligation.
Lavinia is distracted again, and agitated. Something has come into her headâshe doesn't know from where or whyâand she is thinking about the town's name. How many years has it been since she considered it? “Homer,” she says, “Get my Bible, please.” Little Homer looks up, startled to hear his name, as if she's suddenly appeared in the room. “My Bible. It's right there on the bookshelf.” She takes the Bible from him. Exodus, she thinks. The onionskin crackles, gilt-edged pages sliding in slabs under her finger tip. Lavinia skims and then reads when she finds it. She laughs resignedly, and shakes her head with a “what did you expect” finality. They all look up at her.
“What are you reading, Mother?” Paul asks.
“It comes after the plagues,” she says, “When they're wandering in the desert.”
Paul and Mae look at her silently, waiting for her to explain, and Lavinia begins to read aloud: “âSo Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea, and they went out into the wilderness of Shur; and they went three days in the wilderness, and found no water. And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter: therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people murmured against Moses, saying, What shall we drink? And he cried unto the LORD; and the LORD shewed him a tree, which when he had cast into the waters, the waters were made sweet.'”
Lavinia slaps the open pages on her lap and shakes her head. Paul lays his newspaper on his lap and exhales loudly. He looks quickly at Mae, then at Lavinia, and says quietly, “Well, what about it, Mother?”
“They named this town Marah because of the stream that runs through it. When settlers first came through here, no horse would drink from it. Finally someone tasted it and said, sure enough, it was bitter. Of course, that didn't matter so much once they got settled and started digging wells. They knew their Bible back then, I tell you.”
“Mother, please,” Paul says softly. The children watch Lavinia, waiting for her response.
“Paul, I am simply talking about how the town got its name. There can't be any harm in that.”
“But that's not what you're talking about.”
“Well, of course it is. What did you think I meant?”
“Marah means bitter, Mother. I remember you read me that passage back when John and I started up the business. I don't think we should dwell on it. It's upsetting.”
Oh, go on and say it, Lavinia thinks. Say you mean it's upsetÂting to Mae. That I'm upsetting Mae. And then I can say that everything is upsetting to Mae these days, and that coddling her isn't making it any better and maybe you should stop coddling her. Life here is bitter, even though it didn't used to be. It's a fact, and pretending otherwise won't make it so. How much more of this is a body meant to cope with, she wonders? Prodding the children toward adulthood should be a pleasure. Waking each morning to find herself not only another day older but still spared the worst humiliations of old age should be another. But this evasion and pretense, the elaborate politeness their life together now required was suffocating. If the telephone were to ring right now, they'd all come clean out of their skins, they're wound so tight.
“All right,” she says instead. “I'm sorry.”
Little Homer has gone to stand by Mae, who has set her mending on the marble-topped table beside her. She's staring at the carpet, jiggling an agitated foot. Homer pulls apart Mae's clasped hands and climbs up into her lap. Mae sits with her arms loosely around him, never moving her head, staring off at the same spot on the carpet. Homer perches there, not daring to relax against her, but unwilling to leave her. He takes her hand on his lap, pulling up her fingers one by one, then letting them go so that they thump against his leg.
Lavinia sees that Mae is struggling to control herself, and says, “Come, leave your Mama be, Homer. She's tired. Come sit with me.” Little Homer keeps hold of his mother's hand and looks into her face, defiant. Oh, look at him, Lavinia thinks. Look at your child! Ruby and Ellis know better than to try most times, and wait for their mother to come to them before they'll touch her. Mae's eyes are more focused now, but still staring at the carpet. “Come on now, Homer. Come sit here. Your mama's tired is all.” Lavinia gets out of her chair just enough to lean over and catch Homer's free hand.
“Let go, Homer. Listen to your grandma,” Paul intervenes, and Homer drops Mae's hand to go sit limply on Lavinia's lap, still looking sullenly at his mother. He leans against Lavinia as he dared not with Mae, resting his head against the side of her neck. Now Mae's breathing quickens, her chest and stomach rising and falling in little stabs. She shakes her head slowly in the tiniest movement, still staring at the carpet. Ruby turns a page of her book, Ellis drills his slow holes. Paul looks up once from his newspaper, across the top of it to Mae, purses his lips almost imperceptibly, and looks down again. Mae's eyes close and her head sinks in remorse. She looks up at Paul with her eyes wide and blinking as if she is waking up, then she looks at Homer with a tender, sorrowful look and holds out her hand. He rushes to her and she takes him on her lap, rocking him.
“I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” she murmurs. “Mama loves you.” Homer pulls Mae's face close to his, “Mama,” he says. She kisses his hair.
“Why are you always tired, Mama?”
“I don't know, Homer, I just am.”
Their faces are hidden from her, so Lavinia watches them openly, a sad sort of smile pulling at her mouth, somewhere between appeasement and contentment. Paul is watching, too, hungry and relieved. Lavinia wonders that the intensity of his gaze alone doesn't make Mae look up at him, but she's still rocking Little Homer, kissing him, her body bent around her rangy son, as soft now as it had been brittle moments ago. When Mae does look up at Paul, her face is timid and remorseful, but Paul sinks back against the corner of the davenport, leans his head on his hand, and he smiles.
There, Lavinia thinks. Isn't that better.
T
he town resurrects itself. It should be a joyful thingâhammers flashing and striking home, the wood skeletons of houses in their yellow rows, lustrous as sheaves of wheatâbut there can be no contentment so long as the men and women bear the suspicion that each stud and beam is no better than a filament of straw, stacked by a clever child. It's no good trying to reason that it can't happen again, no good arguing that the tornado season has passed, because the next one will be upon them soon enough when the winter is over and the question that no one can manage to dispel is, “How long?”
A woman walks through the frame of her new house and manages to allow herself to imagine it plastered and painted inside, ready for living in and even in need of its first cleaning. She walks between the rooms and thinks, How happy this would have made me before. But when she stands between the studs where a wall will soon be built, she sees only the wreckage of her former house, the snapped beams and splintered glass the storm left in the very place she is standing.
A man at work building the frame of his new house knows that the lumber he's bought and the clapboards and window glass he has coming are just flimsy, brittle things, for all that they are new. He holds a stud and hits it hard with his hammer, though the head of the nail he has just driven in already lies flush. He sees the slight depression the hammer's head has made in the wood, points to it and says,
See that?
speaking aloud as he still sometimes does to the son he lost in the storm. He strikes again, as if to show the boy how soft the wood really is. He hears the boy's voice in his head, saying,
Can I have a try?
and he strikes harder, denting and pitting the wood until finally he strikes so wildly he smashes its milled edge.
There!
he cries out, as if he has proven something.
He finds that he is weeping and kicks the stud. He kicks it again and again until his foot hurts and then he throws his hammer away from him into the grass and picks up the crowbar lying there beside the stacked lumber and lath. It slaps back heavily against his palms when he gives it a toss, and then his thick hands choke the straight end and his arms raise up high and he's swinging it like a bat. It's disjointed, somehow; the sound of each blow comes well after the reverberation jarring his arms and neck. He keeps swinging, waiting for them to match up but they never do, and he finally has to stop and sit for a while. It's funny that he's ruined the one stud without attracting any attention on the street, but then the sound of metal hitting wood is just the sound of building, and common enough these days.
The thought, when it comes to him, is simple and seems, in its way, pure. Still, he's shocked that he thought of it so quicklyâthat he thought of it at allâand now he's stacked his unused lumber and lath in the bed of his truck and he's driving it all out to the burn site on the edge of town.
Nothing is growing yet in the place they burned the wreckage from the storm; a little grass and some weeds poke up around the edges of a large circle of scorched earth. He stacks the lath there in a teepee, splashes it with gasoline, and leans a few boards together around that. He stands upwind a ways to light the end of a rolled up newspaper with a match, and when he tosses it into an opening he's left, the lath goes up like paper.