“I think the friggin’ well’s drying up.”
“Why would it do that?” Victoria asked, already envisioning the extra money they would need to fix it.
“Beats me. Probably that rich bugger up the road’s sucking it all up with his fancy irrigation bullshit.”
“Doesn’t he pump out of the creek?”
“Don’t make no matter. Water’s water. You pump it outta the creek, it’ll just suck more outta the ground to fill it back up. Either way, we gotta cut back till I can get it checked out.”
“Cut back how much?”
“Five minutes for a shower, half tub for a bath.”
“Five minutes? I don’t think I can get my hair washed and rinsed that quick, Bobby. How about ten?”
“Five minutes. You can’t manage that, then cut your damn hair.”
Victoria opened her mouth to argue, then abandoned the thought. Water, she realized, had become a precious commodity on the farm—the only precious commodity on the farm.
Putting some vegetables onto her plate, she put the lids back on the pots and sat down. She’d long since dispensed with the notion of serving dishes. Drifting off into a solitary reverie, her mind remained vaguely aware of Bobby’s mumbling and grumbling but in a pre-functionary way, rolling it into the realm of background noises; ticking clocks, running toilets, the blathering TV.
“Hey! You hear me?”
Victoria quickly scrambled to recall his words, knew he’d been talking but had no idea what about. “I, uh—”
“I don’t think it’s too bloody much to ask, Vic. You think it’s too much to ask? Huh? Too damn complicated for you to remember to keep the window closed. What do I got to do? Nail the buggers shut?”
“No, I—” she started again, now remembering what it was he’d been complaining about.
“Here, why don’t I get you some socks and a shirt. That’ll be warmer.” She slid away from the table and into the bedroom, returning with his favorite plaid flannel and wool socks.
“The problem ain’t that I don’t have a shirt on, Vic. The problem is you having that frickin’ window wide open like it’s the fourth of bloody July. Winter’s gonna be a cold one this year.”
“I know, I know. I’m sorry. These will help warm you up.”
She gave him the shirt, watched him grunt himself into it, then handed him one sock at a time, waiting as he struggled over his belly to pull them on.
“Bad as friggin’ Pearl’s around here.” He sat up and resumed eating, puffing slightly from the exertion. “Next thing you’ll have a bloody sign up too. ‘No shirt, no socks, no service.’” He paused to consider his wittiness. “Don’t get no damn service around here, anyhow.”
Victoria ignored him, took his plate back to the stove and refilled it. Half of what Bobby said to her she paid no attention to, having learned over the years that the words rolled across his brain and off his tongue with no depth attached, that his verbal abuse was more driven by bad habit than by any real intention to hurt her. She also knew that, if she ever dared to leave, he’d be one of those husbands who, coming home to find an empty house and his wife gone, would stand in stunned disbelief wondering what her problem was, wondering how she could just walk out when things, although not perfect, were still pretty damn good. Not that she even considered leaving a possibility. Bobby had made it abundantly clear in times past what would happen if she did. And it was a consequence she was not willing to pay.
She sat back down and pushed her food around her plate, the sound of his wet smacking filling their space in lieu of conversation. Meeting Elliot had complicated things for her. Whereas before, she could push Bobby’s annoyances off to the side, they now all seemed center stage and in sharp focus, each one compared unfavorably in stark relief against Elliot’s background.
“Hey! I got you something,” he said, his face brightening.
“You did?”
“Yep. A surprise. Hang on, I’ll get it.”
He pushed back from the table, rummaged through some bags in the porch, and emerged with a shiny aluminum teakettle.
“Here. These were on sale at Mrs. Barlow’s store.”
“Oh. Thank you,” Victoria mumbled, as she took it and turned it over in her hand.
“Figured we could use a new one,” he said, nodding at a dented kettle sitting on the back burner.
“Yeah. That one leaks a bit,” Victoria agreed, both of them careful not to elude too strongly to Bobby’s fit of rage, which had resulted in the kettle being crushed underfoot.
“Didn’t never pour no good, anyhow. Figured it’d be best to get a new one before you ended up getting burnt again.”
She looked at the red scar splashed across her left forearm. “Thanks. It’s nice.”
“Yup. Hey, got some milk? 'Taters are dry as hell. Not like my mama’s. Now there was a lady who could cook. You gonna get in to see her this week?”
“Am I going to get in and see her? It’s you she wants to see, Bobby, not me,” Victoria said as she got up and poured him a glass of milk.
“I just did see her.”
“When?”
“Last Tuesday . . . no, Monday.”
“Hardly. You can’t call that a visit.”
“Can too. I was there, wasn’t I? I saw her.”
“You dropped off her birthday card. You could have at least gone in to see her.”
“I did see her.”
“Well, yes, okay. Technically you did see her. But she didn’t get to see you, did she?”
“Not my fault. I was there if she wanted to see me.”
“Bobby, she’s an old lady. She can’t help it if she was sleeping.”
“Never said she could help it, did I?” He pressed the words down on her, clearly irritated.
“No.”
He wrestled with his emotions for a minute, hacking at the meat, draining his milk, then looking darkly toward the door.
“Just don’t like to see her that way, that’s all,” he said quietly. “All crumpled up and stiff.”
“She’s not doing so bad, Bobby. Compared to most of them in the home.”
“Not right anyhow, her being stuck in that place. Once I get the house built though, I’ll get her out of there. Move her back out here to the farm where she belongs.”
Victoria softened as she looked at the little boy trapped inside of the man sitting across from her. After his father died, he had nearly worn himself out trying to work in the bush, run the farm and keep everything maintained so that his mother could continue to live there. Eventually, it all became too much for him. His mother had been ecstatic. She had wanted to move into town years earlier.
“Webber called today,” Victoria said disdainfully.
“Ya? What he want?”
“Didn’t say. Probably wants you to fix his tractor again. He ever pay you for last time?”
“Not yet.”
“Not yet. Not ever, Bobby. I think you spend more time fixing his tractor than you do our own.”
“Don’t start, Vic. Like I told you before. I might be doing a lot of fixing stuff up for free now, but once we get to building the house all them guys are going to come out and give us a hand. Gonna save us a fortune in labor costs.”
“Hmm. Seems to me we’d be a lot further ahead if you just got paid for all the mechanic work you do, and then we could afford to hire a real builder. What about, JJ? He ever give you anything from that last car he sold?”
“Why would he give me anything? It was his car.”
“Come on, Bobby. Everyone in town knows he wouldn’t have got near that much money for it if you hadn’t rebuilt the motor.”
“We all rebuilt the motor,” he said defensively.
“None of them have a clue how to rebuild a motor like you do, Bobby. You’ve said so yourself. At least not one that can go fast enough to sell to the guys from the city. They all just do whatever you say. And then when it’s done, JJ sells it and takes home a bundle of cash. Right?”
“Ya, well, maybe.” He shifted sideways, trying to find a comfortable placement on the chair.
“Bobby,” she chided gently. “You know I’m right. You should be fixing up your own cars. JJ’s taking advantage of all you guys just because none of you are willing to stand up to him.”
“Naw. It’s not like that, Vic. JJ’s pretty damn good with a hammer. You’ll see. Once we start building our house, he’ll pay me back for all the time I put into them cars. Where are those house plans, anyhow? You ever find them?”
Victoria shook her head.
“Well, we’ll have to dig them out again one of these days and have another look, okay? I been thinking maybe we should add that second bathroom you wanted. Maybe I’ll even get you one of them fancy dishwasher things. You’d like that, hey?”
She nodded aimlessly. The plans were really just a solitary sketch of the house they used to dream of building. During the early years, walls had been erased and expanded liberally to accommodate the imagined future growth of their family. As time wore on, reality kept revising the plan downward until one day the drawing just couldn’t be found at all.
Victoria placed a pan of brownies on the table, and he devoured two and was halfway through a third before his face brightened.
“Guess what I heard at the coffee shop today. Benson Ferguson, shit . . . just like an old woman that guy. Knows more gossip about people than they knows about themselves. Anyhow, he was saying Diana’s ‘specting again.” He shook his head with a touch of admiration. “Shit, broad’s a walking, talking, baby machine, hey? What is that, her tenth or something?”
“Eighth,” Victoria corrected.
Diana, it was common knowledge was, and always would be, Bobby’s first love. The vivacious daughter of a relatively successful businessman, she’d been considered a good catch and Bobby, five years her senior, had claimed her as his own before she was two months into the ninth grade. With her parents openly pleased with his insular effect on their coveted firstborn and Diana herself feeling immaturely flattered, Bobby became a regular fixture in their fine home. Within the year, their two lives had been merged into one, and he decided it was time for Diana to marry him.
In typical peacock-proud fashion, he’d bought her a glittery, persuasive engagement ring and flashed it around town. So impressed was he with his exquisite trinket that he was thrown into a free fall of uncomprehending disbelief when his cocky proposal was met with cautious uncertainty. His tender ego mutilated by what he could only perceive as her rejection and open humiliation of him in front of the town, he lunged into a month-long tantrum of drunken fighting and willing women. Several times, if it hadn’t been for the intervention of his friends, the situation looked like it might end quite tragically. The whole town had occupied themselves with his embittered thrashings, listening sympathetically to his endless woes before rushing out to share the latest tale of heartbreaking angst.
The weekend Victoria returned from the dance competition, however, the eyes and ears of the town swiveled around to greet its wounded hero. It was not often that Hinckly birthed an athlete good enough to compete in the important competitions held in the city. And it never seemed to matter to any of them that she had never actually competed but rather watched from the sidelines, feigning a flu. Feeling as if she were in some bizarre nightmare, she’d accepted their congratulations. She obediently rode in their welcome home victory parade, waving at dirty faces that lined dirty streets to stare as she passed by, each one seemingly oblivious to the fact that there was no victory to celebrate.
As the talk of the town shifted on a fickle wind away from Bobby and Diana’s breakup and became consumed with the plight of its fallen hero, Bobby’s interest shifted as well. Looking back she could never understand what it was about his swaggering boyish confidence, his tough talk and flippant attitude that she’d found appealing. Maybe it was the temporary protection she found his made-for-TV ego delivered to her own, irreparably damaged by Billy Bassman and then annihilated by the loss of the biggest opportunity of her life. Whatever the attraction had been, it was short-lived but not quite short enough. It held long enough for her, with the expectations of the town still hanging heavily across her shoulders, to accept his rebound proposal. A proposal, she later understood, that was his retaliation against Diana, who had, within four weeks of their breakup, apparently fallen in love with Tom Gainer, a long-time family friend. Diana’s fall wedding was quickly planned and processed.
Victoria had never shared with anyone the truth of what really happened the day she’d withdrawn from the dance competition. Not even with Rose, who knew more about her than almost anyone. But this was a truth so deep she could scarcely share it with herself, preferring to wrap it in layers of half-truths and outright lies. Preferring to wrap it so tightly she could almost believe it ceased to be. But it remained a cold, hard, perfect pearl in the belly of the oyster, awaiting the day prying hands would push in and release it from the slimy deceit that covered but could never obliterate it. It had remained hidden in her for over twenty years now. But no matter how well she kept it concealed from the outside, it remained a constant source of irritation, pricking her at the most inopportune times: the pricking and scraping her accepted penance.
Sickness had brought her down the day she was to compete. But it was not the flu that had dug her grave. She’d watched, nauseous, as the other girls competed with the fluid lucidness of air. Watched someone with half her talent be awarded her audition, walk away with her dream. She knew with a dread certainty she could have beaten them all. Beaten them easily if it wasn’t for the tiny fetal mass that had poisoned her body into worthlessness and weakness, fastened her feet firmly in the suctioning mud so well known to those cursed enough to have grown up in a place like Hinckley.