There's someone walking toward her, a man, still far off and waving. Lavinia recognizes him first and waves back to signal that she has seen him and they continue towards each other. He calls out to her when they're close enough for their voices to carry.
“Are you broke down?” he yells, “Where's your car?”
“No, I'm all right!” she calls back. “It's me, Arthur. It's just me.”
Arthur Coffman slows for a moment, then hurries toward Lavinia.
“I never . . . ” He looks at her with watery eyes as if she's an apparition, a revelation for which he is profoundly grateful. He squeezes her mittened hands through his gloves.
Lavinia is crying, shaking her head. “I could have come sooner. I should have come sooner,” she says.
It's starting to snow. Arthur puts her arm through his and when they've reached his house, he hangs her coat to dry on the back of a chair pulled up to the kitchen stove.
When they're seated at the round kitchen table, Lavina skates her hands across it's surface.
“A person could be forgiven for thinking it was the same table,” she says.
“Homer helped me build it.”
“I remember. I don't think either of you had a choice, once Sadie saw ours.”
“You know, I was riled for the longest time when you sold out,” Arthur says.
Lavinia clucks at him.
He holds up a hand and says, “It's only the truth. And I've had reason since to be glad you did.”
“So have I,” Lavinia says.
“I've seen a number of things in my time,” says Arthur, “But never anything like the sight of my own metal water trough, coming end over end toward the house, fast as a car on the highway. That cloud was coming for us right behind the trough, but I tell you in that very moment I was more worried about what the trough would do to the house.”
They're silent then, with their hands resting lightly on their coffee cups and the plate of oatmeal cookies standing untouched on the crocheted doily at the center of the table. Lavinia looks at Arthur, at his good face that is still as familiar as if he were family. It was Arthur who reached her first when the hired hand found Homer dead in the field, Arthur who'd helped to carry Homer into the house, and Arthur who'd found her trying to right the corn stalks that had bent where Homer had fallen and gently led her away. Arthur had brought in the harvest for her that year, along with Paul and a few hired men. It would have rotted in the ground if it hadn't been for them, she'd told them, and then the sight of Arthur rushing back to his own crops and Paul rushing back to the lumberyard and only the hired men left in her kitchen eating pie was all it took to force her to sell.
“Am I allowed to ask what you were doing out there on the county road alone in winter?”
“I'm not certain, myself,” Lavinia says.
“I suppose you had to see it for yourself,” Arthur says.
“I've seen what happened all over town, but this is something else.”
“Out here's where you lost something, too.”
“Yes,” Lavinia says.
“I won't lie to you. We've heard talk out here, not much, but some.” Arthur shakes his head and turns his cup in a slow circle on its saucer. “It doesn't amount to much, probably because out here people can see with their own eyes that there's nothing left of your old place. But I guess not everybody sees it that way in town.”
“Even if they did, they'd still say it wasn't the same. It wasn't my farm anymore. I'd sold it, I had the money, and it wasn't mine to lose.”
Arthur looks at Lavinia with a sad smile. She says, “I know,” and looks down at her hands folded on the table.
“I've seen that expression on your face before,” Arthur says, and Lavinia looks back up at him, curious. “Just the one time. I couldn't figure it then, but I realized later it was the moment you decided to sell up. Funny thing about letting go. That storm peeled a little part of this house clean offââjust wasn't there anymoreââbut once it was gone, we decided to keep it that way. Oh, we closed up the hole and prettied it up so it looked like it'd always been like that, but all we rebuilt was the barn. Sadie always said the house was too big for us, anyway.”
Lavinia has the sudden feeling that Homer is there in the chair next to hers, smiling at a hand of cards he's reordering, hooking the toe of his boot around her ankle under the table. She feels time folding in on itself then and collapsing on top of her and it's impossible to think that it's not all still happening: that her father is out there somewhere, leaning on a hoe; that Homer is right here beside her; that her mother is standing in her kitchen garden, filling a bowl with green beans and pea pods.
“You wouldn't have to leave, you know,” Arthur says. “Not really. Your land is for sale.”
Lavinia's breathing goes shallow and, as much as she wants to look away from Arthur, she can't.
“They're selling out and heading for Chicago,” Arthur says.
Lavinia shakes her head and exhales. “Paul is no farmer and my time on this land is past.”
“I'd feel better knowing you were near friends.”
Lavinia laughs. “So would I.”
“Paul will be coming for you soon,” Arthur says, rising from the table. He helps Lavinia on with her coat, then puts on his own.
“Oh, I can go by myself,” Lavinia says. “Wouldn't you rather stay here in the warm?”
Arthur smiles at her. “No, I wouldn't.”
They walk slowly, in the direction of town, watching for the Ford on the horizon. Snow is still falling, thick and soft, and, except for the sound of their footfalls on the road, everything around them is utterly still. They stop when a car comes into view, though it's still far off, and Arthur says, “That'll be your boy.”
Fear comes over Lavinia as Paul approaches, too quickly. It's the same fear she felt when he came to collect her that last time from the farm, when he moved her in to town, or perhaps only the memory of it. There are endings all around us, every day, she thinks. It's a mercy we don't see them for what they are. How else could you stand to put a child down if you knew he'd just asked to be picked up for the last time? How else could you absently accept a whiskery kiss if you knew it was the last time a husband would thank you for breakfast? She wonders now how she will lift her feet from the asphalt and step into the car.
Suddenly, Paul is there, waiting on the other side of the road for her. Arthur opens the passenger door and reaches in to shake Paul's hand.
“I guess she kept warm, after all,” Paul says.
Arthur hands Lavinia into the seat, and time folds in on her again, slamming together like a telescope.
“Sadie will be fit to be tied when she gets home and finds out you were there,” Arthur says.
Lavinia takes hold of his hand again and, when she looks up at him, she finds that she can't speak.
Arthur nods at her and steps back. He closes the door, saying, “You take good care of this old girl, son,” and walks swiftly back in the direction of home without waiting to wave or watch them drive off.
After they've driven a mile or two, Lavinia says, “You're a good son, Paul, but what were you thinking, leaving me out there like that?”
Paul shakes his head in mock exasperation and Lavinia laughs until she must wipe her eyes. She waits until they are parked in the driveway at home before she says, “I was wrong before, Paul.”
“What about?”
“About leaving Marah.”
Paul's hands stiffen on the wheel. He does nothing to hide his dismay, and turns to Lavinia and says, “I honestly don't know whether I'm coming or going with either one of you.”
“Don't you understand why I had to go out there today?”
“To see the Coffmans.”
“Don't you sass me, young man. You'll never get so old you can sass your mother. I had to find out if I could leave this place behind, leave it truly behind, and never see it again. I can imagine you're surprised. Lord knows, I've been busy enough listing all the reasons to stay. But I want you to think about this and think about it hard.”
“Mother, when I drove up and saw you and Arthur standing there, you didn't look to me like someone who wanted to leave. More like someone who'd just as soon bolt as get in the car.”
“I was saying good-bye.”
“You never said a word.”
“I've known Arthur Coffman all my life. Surely, you've lived long enough to know that two old friends can say a thing without opening their mouths.”
“What happens if I still don't think we should move?” Paul says.
Lavinia looks at her hands in her lap. “Then we won't move.”
“What am I supposed to tell Mae?”
“Don't tell her anything. Not yet, anyway. If you decide we're staying, there won't be any need, and if you decide to leave, well, I should think that would be an easy thing to tell her. We already know what she wants.”
Paul opens his door to get out of the car, but Lavinia stops him with a hand on his arm. “She doesn't want it, she needs it. I'm not the only one who can say a thing without opening my mouth.”
Paul nods and Lavinia finds she can't say the next words; that when they drove away from the spot she'd been standing on the road with Arthur, she'd felt relief and even elation when she realized she'd made up her mind. She'd expected then to think first of John and of living near both her boys for the first time in years, and instead she'd thought of Mae. That this should be so moves her profoundly and fills her with remorse. Paul opens her car door for her and offers his hand, but she waves him off, saying, “I'll be in directly.” She's wiping her eyes again and he knows better than to argue, but says, “That's twice today you've told me to leave you behind out in the cold,” before he goes into the house.
She'll go in soon when she's managed to get control of herself again, when she can face Little Homer who will see her face and want to know why she's been crying. She'll go inside when she can think how to tell him that she wants him to come back to this place one day when he's a grown man, that she wants him to come back to see his first home, no matter where he's living. She'll tell him that when he stands in front of this house as a man he'll be overcome with the certain feeling that they're all still inside, his whole family, waiting for him. It will seem like more than he can bear, the feeling that every moment of his life is still taking place, and that he is nonetheless powerless to see it, forced to stand outside with no way in. Lavinia knows that she can tell him these things without frightening him, that he'll understand in his way when she tells him that memory is something more than recollection; that the idea of a moment can sometimes seem as real as the moment once was itself.
Come back here when you're a man
, she'll say. Press your hands against the trunk of the post oak by the street but don't think about how much you and it have both grown since you saw it last. Put your fingers into the fissures in the bark and remember that your own father planted it there. But know that memory can beguile; it can draw you to it the way you are drawn to the skin of new ice on a pond, tempted against your better judgment to walk across it to see if it will hold. Remind yourself then that memory can lose its power to harm if you let it alone a while. If you leave it to ripen, like ice.
P
aul stands alone in the office, gripping a shelf and weeping. “Thank you,” the Methodist minister had said, over and over again. “Thank you, indeed, but we couldn't see our way clear to accepting any lumber. Couldn't be seen to benefit where others have not.” It's a curious feeling, knowing he has exhausted all of his options, knowing that he has literally tried everything he can try. For the first time, Paul thinks that it would have been better if they had lost the house or the lumberyard in the storm. He has never allowed himself the thought before, banishing it when it came creeping around the edges of his thoughts as mere foolishness and dangerous wallowing. But now he is gripping the shelf with such ferocity that it begins to come loose from the wall and he wrenches it harder until he has pulled it off entirely and he is standing there with the shelf in his hands and the books and boxes that crashed down off it around his feet and the sound of his own wail dying in the air.
He hears a door close and realizes that he is not alone. He goes out quietly into the yard and finds Lon there, shuffling among the piles of lumber trying to invent an occupation for himself as if he'd gone out there with a purpose other than avoiding the embarrassment of meeting Paul's eyes.
Paul stands there in the doorway where Lon can see him, too weary to find something to say that will dispel the tension for them both. He should tell him to go, tell him to just get the hell out and find himself another job. He should force him to go as he forced Irene and Clarence when he finally pushed them bodily out the door and told them to try their luck at the banks and the rail yards and any town merchant they could find.
“I'm going home,” he says and he turns to go as soon as Lon has nodded his already lowered head.
Out on the sidewalks, Paul is invisible. People pay him no notice at all, anymore, like children who have prodded an insect to death and then abandon it, bored, because it no longer offers any resistance. He can recall the exact moment it first occurred to him that he was meant to be upset by the stares and the manner of staring he encountered around town. His mother had been indignant when he'd tried to put it down to an absence of manners or some odd sort of provincialism. She'd railed loudly and exhaustively against that notion, letting him know that all the people rubbernecking at them around town were no more or less sophisticated than they were themselves. “Oh, no,” she'd said, “We've all been reared on the same moral code and if people watch and whisper as we pass, it's because they've chosen to do so.” He'd taken to averting his eyes after that, to avoid witnessing his neighbors' abasement, to avoid admitting how those looks could scald.