Greenville (30 page)

The girl realizes her smile has gone a little rigid on her face.

You, um, you were saying something about meeting him. Your brother? Your half brother?

Oh right, the father says, suddenly smiling again. Tell her, Dale.

Well, the son says, I got a call last winter, this guy was
practically screaming into the phone, Are you Dale Peck? Are you Dale Peck? And when I said yes he said, I’m your brother! And of course I knew the story, so I said, No, you’re my uncle, and he was like, What do you mean, your uncle? Why did you call me? He was so confused and excited he thought I’d called him. The son shrugs. I guess he’d had a friend over setting up his computer, and his friend showed him how you could get phone numbers off the Internet. So they put in our name and New York State and the rest is history. My number’s unlisted, the son said then. But it came up anyway.

I tried looking up my brother one time, the father says, but I didn’t find him because his mother gave him her second husband’s name. Gorman. Dale Peck Gorman. But you should get on the Internet. You never know who you might meet. Maybe you’ve got a long-lost brother or sister out there.

Carly looks up from the other end of the table, where she and Tommy are thumb-wrestling.

What?

Never mind dear, the girl says. Go back to your game. She looks around the table then, suddenly realizes that everyone has finished eating. She turns to the son, the father. Anybody want seconds?

Everyone is full.

Christine, check and see is there any of that apple pie left?

Uh—

Now
.

There’s cherry, Carly says. Mom made it yesterday.

Good, the girl says. Go get it, would you?

Christine gets the apple pie from the fridge and Carly gets the
cherry from the pantry while the girl gets plates and forks—no, spoons, she decides, and grabs a quart of vanilla ice cream from the freezer. She is aware that the meal has gone on longer than it usually does and she still has to wash up. But it doesn’t feel finished yet.

Hey, Donnie, the father says now. Would you mind giving Dale a little tour after we’re done here? Show him the barn? I’d like him to see what his old man did once upon a time.

Donnie looks up from the plate of cherry pie Carly has put in front of him. Well, I guess we could spare a few minutes. Ralph’ll be wanting us back out in the fields before too long.

That’s my grandfather, the girl says, putting a plate in front of the father. I gave you a little of both, she says.

Well, thank you, darling, the father says. Eat up, Dale, he says to his son. Homemade apple pie.

Just a little, the son says. He pats his stomach, though whether he’s indicating he’s full or watching his weight the girl doesn’t know.

Spoons scrape rhythmically over china. Slices of pie disappear from the plates. It seems that almost as soon as she has served everyone they are done eating. Already Donnie is fidgeting in his chair.

Was you still wanting to see the ladies?

If it’s not too much trouble? the son says.

Nah, nah.

Donnie pushes back his chair so quickly it almost falls over.

As they walk down the slope of the driveway the son lags behind a little, letting his father and Donnie walk on ahead. The girl thinks of how he’d had trouble keeping to his father’s pace when they first arrived.

I just wanted to say thank you for lunch.

Oh, it was no trouble. I was already cooking.

Not just for the food. The son opens his mouth, closes it again. There is half a grimace on his face, as if saying these things is difficult or even painful for him in some way. The girl tries to set her face into an expression of calm welcoming, as she does when one of her kindergarteners gets nervous during show and tell.

My father and I have been through some tough times, the son says finally. It’s nice to be able to spend a pleasant afternoon with him. Doing something that’s important to him.

Oh.

The word comes out of the girl’s mouth without premeditation, and it seems somehow adequate as a response. Round, and full of feeling.

If you’re ever in the city, I’d love to repay the favor.

Well, I really need to get down there to visit Brian and his boyfriend. If I do I’ll be sure to look you up.

I’d like that, the son says. The blandness of his smile suggests that he hasn’t heard what she said, or perhaps he doesn’t think the coincidence as significant as she does. But it seems he’s just distracted. What’s this? he says.

It’s called a Century Farm plaque. The state gives them to farms that have been in the same family for more than a hundred years.

The son kneels down in front of the big slab of granite. He uses his hand to sweep back the unmown grass that has folded over the edges of the plaque mounted in the stone. Hull Farm. 1887–1987.

Cool.

He looks up at the farmhouse at the top of the lawn then. His hand is still on the Century Farm plaque, and there is that look on his face again, and the girl suddenly realizes he’s not decorating the house but imagining himself in it. It’s as if he is giving himself her house’s history, her family’s past. As if he doesn’t have one of his own.

He stands then, and the girl steps back, feeling for the second or third or fourth time like a voyeur in her parents’ home.

Guess we’d better go see the “ladies,” the son says.

There are only half a dozen cows in the barn. Donnie’s tour is cursory, and already almost over: he has walked from one end of the milking alley to the other. The son follows his father and the girl walks behind, single file. She is barefoot, and she takes care not to slip into the manure gutters.

At the far end of the barn Donnie turns, pauses. The father turns, looks again at what he’s just looked at.

It’s all automated now, huh Donnie?

Yup.

The father turns to his son.

When I was up here we still had to carry the milk in pails to the holding vat. Eighty pounds those buckets weighed. I used to carry two at a time, they weighed more than I did.

Donnie says, Yup, again. He does a little soft-shoe sidestep. You used to sway between em like you was drunk, but you never did fall over.

Well hell, Donnie. Uncle Wallace would’ve kicked me square in the ass if I’d done something like that. He’d’ve put his boot right through the seat of my pants and had Aunt Bessie charge me for sewing up the hole.

Donnie nods his head. Wallace was a thrifty man. There is a pause, and then he says, Silage is automated too. He presses a button on the wall behind him, and a few grains of corn and ground stalks spew into the end of the trough.

One of the ladies lows.

Well look at that, the father says. Is that corn?

Corn, yeah.

Just then the door at the other end of the alley opens, and the girl’s grandfather walks in. He limps only a few steps into the barn on his lame hip, spots Donnie, and waves a hand.

That’s Ralph, Donnie says. I gotta get going.

He trots down the alley. The grandfather has already left the barn.

That’s my grandfather, the girl says to the son. Donnie’s always been a bit afraid of him.

Donnie pauses in the barn door.

Bye Dale. Good seeing you.

Bye Donnie, the father says to the closing door. He laughs. Donnie Sutton. Seventy years old, gotta get to the fields.

On the way out of the barn the father scratches one of the ladies on the forehead, then cups her head in both his hands.

Well, hello there baby. Yes hello there beautiful. Those are just the prettiest brown eyes I’ve ever seen, yes they are.

The son watches his father with a soft smile on his face, full of wonder and love, and longing too. He looks at his father with the same expression he’d looked at the girl’s house a moment ago. The father continues to hold the cow’s face in his hands, his face blank again, lost to memory, and all at once the weight of the afternoon settles on the girl’s shoulders, the significance of what
is passing between these two men. The father holds the head of the cow in his hands as though it were something delicate, precious, crystalline—and already broken—while his son watches him with a look on his face that seems to say, If I had a tube of superglue in my hand, I’d put it all back together for you. But the father has eyes only for the cow in his hands. The years seem to melt off his body for the few moments he holds her, the thin limbs of a boy emerge, eyes innocent of a loss he can only acknowledge by pretending it didn’t happen. All at once the girl looks around at the spindly walls of the dairy barn, the vertical slices of light that come through the boards where the battening has fallen off. She sees the straggly lines of the unkempt garden, the unmown lawn, the grass obscuring the edges of the Century Farm plaque. She realizes that loss belongs not just to these men. It’s all she can do not to take the son’s hand in hers and squeeze it.

The son puts his hand on his father’s shoulder.

We’d better get on the road if we want to make it back to Rochester tonight.

The father looks up with a start. Looks at the girl, and then at his son.

I tell you what Dale. There was a time when all I wanted was to be a dairy farmer. I called up Uncle Wallace and begged him to take me back, but all he would say was, You broke my heart Dale, you broke my heart. I told him Ma beat me and Dad was drunk but all he’d say was, You broke my heart. But his heart was too hard to break. It’s a hard life, dairy farming. It’s no life for a man.

No one says anything, and after a moment the father turns back to the cow in his hands.

But you’re a pretty thing anyway. Yes you are. But not as pretty as Gloria Hull.

As they leave the barn Donnie and the boy are pulling out of the driveway in Donnie’s pickup. Sand spurts from under his tires as he races after her grandfather. The father laughs again.

Seventy years old and still raring to work. Donnie Badget. Sutton, I mean. He laughs at his son. Donnie
Sutton
. Hey, he says then, to the girl. Would you mind if I took a picture of you and Dale? Nobody’s gonna believe me at the reunion when I tell them a sexy blonde made me lunch, I’m gonna need proof.

The girl feels her blush on her cheeks like a prickly brush. She pushes her fingers through her hair.

Sure.

She and the son stand side by side with their backs to the barn. She feels it behind her like a backdrop, sees the farmhouse over the father’s shoulders as similarly two-dimensional, unreal. She and the son sling their arms over each other’s shoulders. She tries to pinpoint a moment when this understanding was forged, this connection, but can’t. Still, it feels natural, and she squeezes his shoulder a little.

Now it is the father’s turn to beam at his son.

Look at that, he says. Dale with his arm around a pretty girl. He guffaws, but lightly. Oh well.

The camera clicks audibly in the quiet afternoon.

They linger by the Lincoln, hug. Linger a moment longer. The girl wants them to stay, and she wants them to go too. The moment is full, and she feels it would become distorted if anything else were added to it. Then the father and son get in the car. The girl watches the car as it drives away—it’s what you do, after all, at a
leave-taking. The son backs out of the driveway slowly, the gravel crunching under the Lincoln’s big wheels, then pilots his father’s car a little too quickly around the curve by the creamer and shoots up the hill toward the bridge into town. Then the car crests the hill and is gone as suddenly as it appeared. The girl watches the empty space for a moment until it occurs to her that she will probably never see it, or its occupants again, and then, with a small, nebulous sadness, she walks toward the house to do the dishes before heading back to Justin’s. Within moments she’s distracted by the prospect of hand washing seven plates (why
won’t
her mother buy a dishwasher?), scrubbing the burned residue of canned asparagus from the bottom of the pot, taking a wire brush to the barbecue grill. She should dump the ash bucket too. Maybe she’ll even plant those impatiens. But Justin’s mother had talked about roasting a chicken tonight, and she doesn’t want to be late. She looks at her watch. It’s coming up on three-thirty. A two-and-a-half-hour lunch. Her grandfather would have a
cow
.

The twins have returned to their collage in the living room. There seems to be more paper stuck to their skin than to the piece of cardboard between them. The place is a mess, and she feels a surge of anger. She is almost ready to deliver a lecture about how the twins don’t care about their own home when Carly says,

Dad called. She doesn’t look up from her work.

The girl’s heart rises to her throat. It is an effort to say,

And?

Mom’s fine, Christine says, they’ll be home for dinner. You be here?

And just like that, the girl’s anger melts away. She watches as Christine’s scissors turn a picture of a car into little slips of blue. She is silent for so long that Christine looks up at her.

No, she says then. Justin’s mom is roasting a chicken tonight. I gotta get back. She resists the urge to add the word
home
.

Christine turns back to the page in front of her. She and Carly’s scissors make a sound like water as they cut through paper. After a moment Carly looks up, blowing her bangs off her forehead with a puckered lower lip.

What?

Nothing, the girl says. I’m gonna do the dishes.

She hasn’t exactly forgotten the men, not yet, but she’s not exactly thinking about them either. Instead she feels a warmth across her cheeks, her shoulders: that’s how she’s remembering them. Later, over dinner, she’ll tell Justin and his family about them, and she won’t be conscious of the distance her words put between her and the afternoon, the men, the physical memory of their presence on her cheeks, her shoulders. Her mother will call after dinner, thank her for cooking lunch, quiz her about the two strangers she invited into her house, and the girl will find herself defending them slightly. They were nice guys, Mom. And anyway, the dad was old and the son was gay.

Certainly she’s not conscious of the residence she’s taken up in both the father’s and son’s lives. That she has confirmed the father’s faith in good country people, that the son thinks of her as the one positive experience he’s shared with his father as an adult. It would never occur to her that weeks, months later she’ll be the person they remember from this trip. Not Donnie, not the father’s brother Jimmy dying in Florida, not his mother sitting in
the chair in her brother Herb’s kitchen because of her arthritis and refusing even to move to a chair on the patio with the rest of the family. Not even the reunion—the union, really, the first meeting—with the father’s long-lost half brother, his namesake whose name was changed, and who as a result disappeared for sixty years. Dale Peck who became Dale Gorman. Who lost his name along with his father, lost it to a brother who in his imagination stepped into it like a pair of handed-down shoes.