Plains Song (21 page)

In October the plain is dry as dust, but through the windows of the airport it glistens as if freshly painted. When the glass vibrates it appears to quiver, as if alive. Football fans, wearing red hats and red jackets, stream in and out the doors, crowd into taxis. The two women who stand at the Travelers Aid counter are old enough to evaluate their conflicting impressions. One has come back to where she started and took the greatest pains to get away from. Unless sprinkled with regrets, she is thinking, happiness is a shallow emotion. Nevertheless, she feels more at
home than she had been led to expect. She stands near, and appears to be part of, a large display of pumpkins, ears and stalks of corn, as well as bundles and vases of dried arrangements. These muted fall colors seem to have been chosen to harmonize with the outfit she is wearing. Her hat is forest green, with a pheasant's feather, the jacket of tan gabardine over a straw-colored blouse with a gold pin at the throat. Suede shoes with low heels match her hat. A coiled braid of silver hair is gathered to a bun at the nape of her neck. It has always been Sharon Rose's feeling, and her practice, that to be in good taste is to be inconspicuous.

Her companion, an exact foot taller, wears a black sleeveless cape over a habit (it is the word that comes to mind) of the color made famous by the order of Gray Mothers. She is hatless; her short, crisp hair is worn in a mannish pompadour. Few trouble to notice its color. Her beak-nosed face, the erect posture that seems to tilt her slightly backward, enhance the impression of a figure designed to symbolize something. There is nothing about her that is not conspicuous.

Just the moment before, the name of Sharon Rose Atkins had been hawked over the public address system. It made no visible impression on the throng that milled about as if lost. A young woman in a uniform designed by a man, which called attention to her squat unfortunate figure, came toward Sharon, leading three elderly people, one a male. Out of long habit the two women trailed behind him, a slow vehicle in fast traffic. The brim of his sweat-stained hat had been
wiped back so that he could see better, but it didn't help. Confronting Sharon Rose, he blinked his eyes. He had expected something more substantial.

“You're Miss Atkins?”

Sharon nodded. To gain time he blew his nose, dabbed the cloth at his eyes. The tall stooped woman directly behind him gazed at Sharon as if she were a child in a manger. She said, “You've got a brother named Walter?”

“No.”

“A sister Gloria?”

“No.”

The old man stepped back to gain perspective. A topcoat was draped over his shoulders. His long gray face cocked to the left to put his better eye in focus.

“You're not Adelaide?” No, Sharon Rose was not Adelaide. She felt the keenness of the woman's disappointment. In a gesture that startled Sharon, and held her eyes, the woman put her fingers to her lips as if to hush them. The man turned to face the women. “She says it ain't her.”

“Well, I suppose she knows.”

“There must be other Atkins,” said Sharon.

“Not with Walter for a brother,” the woman replied. She seemed to feel this refuted Sharon's position.

“I don't think it's her,” the other woman said. “She wouldn't be so small.”

Hearing that, the man wheeled and led them off. The rear view of the tall stooped woman with the narrow shoulders, one hand clutching her purse, one held out from her side as if gripping an invisible pail,
held Sharon's attention. Her feet, in unaccustomed shoes, were not at home on the lobby's smooth surface.

For the second time on the same day, Sharon had been mistaken for somebody else.
I'm Sharon Atkins,
she had said. Didn't she look it? She felt the need to check on her appearance. Someone who knew her—back here where she had come from—should step forward and reassure her. In the airport in Boston she had been approached by a woman both bizarre and distinguished in appearance, who now stood beside her. Tall, with short-cropped gray hair, wearing a cape over a smock. As if Sharon had beckoned to her, she said, “I'm Alexandra Selkirk,” and put down her flight bag.

Sharon had returned her gaze.

“You're not Miss Gaylord?”

“I'm Sharon Atkins.”

“Are you sure? You're not here to meet me?” She wheeled slowly to look about her. “I'm so seldom mistaken. Would it be Hayden something, instead of Gaylord?” She stooped to grope in her flight bag. “You're not Mrs. Chalmers? No, no, that's in Lincoln. I'm so sorry. Will you forgive me? I just can't believe that I'm mistaken.” It was clear from her gaze that she did not believe it. A long lantern-jawed visage, unmistakably British, but no sign of it in her brusque speech. A person of impulses. What would she think of next?

“You mentioned Lincoln,” said Sharon.

“Yes, yes. Lincoln, Nebraska.” To assure herself, she referred again to a letter.

“Why,” said Sharon, “that's where I'm going.”

“You see!” she cried. “I knew it! We came here to meet each other!” Her mouth widened to reveal the gap where a tooth was missing. The others were widely spaced, tusk-like. Had she so little interest in her appearance? On Sharon's right shoulder she had rested her large left hand, gripped it firmly. Sharon's impulse to withdraw, to disengage, her most habitual and salient characteristic, seemed to be neutralized by the current of emotion that flowed between them. Long ago, on a similar occasion, she had asserted her independence. “Your fear of being beholden,” Lillian had written, “is really just a fear of your own emotions.” Never mind now what her emotions had been; had her fears been real? They no longer aroused the same emotions.

“Come!” Miss Selkirk said, and led her by the arm toward the gate to their plane.

Experienced with travel, experienced with people, she arranged that Sharon should sit beside her, on the aisle. “I've got to nap,” she said. “I left London at midnight. My biorhythms are in confusion.” She had a lecture to give—she paused to search in her bag for the room reservation—in Grand Island that evening. Where was Grand Island? Sharon explained. Alexandra asked the stewardess to tilt back her seat, then slipped about her head a pair of black eyeshades, held in place by a piece of elastic. Her face, with the eyes covered, was that of a corpse. Had she no idea how she looked? Sharon could not have exposed herself in this manner. A pleated upper lip, the pores of her nose like
those of ripening berries, furrows everywhere, a curious absence of wrinkles, flesh as loose as gloves on her large-knuckled brown-splotched hands. Beneath the left jawbone, a slight swelling and discoloration, characteristic of violin players. Sharon might have guessed it. A woman of such emotion would have nourished herself through music. What music? She thought it might be Vivaldi, the strings urgent and vibrant, the rhythms coming at you like a change in the weather. Sharon would have liked to cover the large idle hands. They were scarless, but insinuating. A similar pair of hands had gripped her in such a manner that she could still feel them. Alexandra Selkirk napped, as if drugged, until they landed in Chicago, where two cups of black coffee revived her. From her purse she took a tin of mints, which she shared with Sharon, and a letter addressed to her in London confirming her reservation at the Crossways Inn. Crossways. How right that was! Women from all over the world would be there. Against her better judgment—and little it mattered—she had been persuaded to fly from England and keep the midwestern momentum going. That had been their appeal. Their
momentum!
Her laughter set her to choking; the stewardess brought her a glass of water.

She confessed to Sharon that she gave freely to strangers what she hesitated to admit to herself. Man's culture was a hoax. Was there a woman who didn't
feel
it? Perhaps a decade, no more, was available to women to save themselves, as well as the planet. Women's previous triumphs had been by default. Men had simply
walked away from the scene of the struggle, leaving them with the children, the chores, the culture, and a high incidence of madness. In a brief résumé of her forthcoming lecture, Alexandra touched on the high points of woman's bondage and her emerging liberation. What saddened her was that she didn't believe it: not a word of it.

She was the daughter of an Army officer and mining engineer exiled in Casper, Wyoming. Her mother had died at her birth. Guilt, surely, had led her father to try to recover that loss in Alexandra. At nine pampered years of age she had been sent to school in the east. Still hardly more than a child, at a school in Geneva, she had married the son of a wine merchant and gone to his home in Grenoble. A darling boy, really, but his home had been her first internment camp. Nevertheless, she liked him as a person. It was the custom of the tribe that had made him a jailer. It had taught her that if you could change the customs, you could change the world. Just recently the flower children had done it, with results she found nauseating. But it
had
been done. More change in ten years than in the previous five centuries. Was it a flaw in her argument to find that customs indeed might change, but not women? A cat was a cat, a dog was a dog, but who could say what it was to be a woman? Without an image of who they were,
who
were they? Hadn't Sharon noticed? Many were seized with the mania to be many people. A curious fact. God knows where it might lead. Alexandra's discourse was punctuated by gasping inhalations of cigarette smoke. Her mouth
open wide, her eyes lidded, the cloud of smoke would be visible in her throat the instant before inhalation. It seemed to Sharon little that went in found its way out.

Never before had Sharon felt drawn to such an aggressive, possessive person. One of her talon-like hands gripped her by the wrist, holding her like prey. A coincidence, surely, but Sharon was reminded of the confrontation with Cora, who had gripped her by the wrist as she whacked her with the hairbrush. Before their arrival in Lincoln, Alexandra took sodium pills to avoid possible heat prostration. She dropped silent as suddenly as she had begun to talk.

A portly matron, wearing owl-eyed tinted glasses, a driving cap with a duckbill visor, had recognized Alexandra from her pictures and identified herself as Mrs. Lura Chalmers, her host and chauffeur. Was there somewhere she could drop Sharon? Mrs. Chalmers's white face had no visible eyebrows; her smile was that of a performing minstrel. Sharon explained that she was waiting for one of her nieces. Why couldn't her niece, Alexandra asked, return Sharon to the Cross-ways Inn, in Grand Island, from where they could return to Boston together? Sharon didn't know. She heard Mrs. Chalmers offer to reserve her a room and look forward to the pleasure of her company on the drive back to Lincoln. Sharon preferred to be alone and collect her jumbled thoughts. She watched Alexandra, as did many others, cross the lobby with her cape billowing behind her, the portly matron trailing with her flight bag. Alexandra would prefer to take the
wrong way, on her own, than be led in the right one. Moments passed before Sharon was aware of the woman at her side, staring at her. The way her right hand gripped the left arm, above the elbow, caught Sharon's attention before her face. She wore plaid-patterned loose-fitting shorts, freshly creased across the lap.

“You're Sharon Atkins?”

“I am,” Sharon replied. Behind the large square-framed glasses, the round face seemed familiar. Sharon had previously remarked that feminist-type women were often of an indeterminate age. There were pencils and cards in the pocket of her blouse. The largeness of the glasses enhanced the smallness of her eyes.

“I'm Caroline Kibbee,” she said.

Sharon blurted, “You are?” She had anticipated Sharon's surprise. She released her grip on the left arm to place both arms across her front. Sharon thought it a very unattractive posture. Caroline had been a brash button-eyed tomboy, the pride of her father, the despair of her mother. Insofar as possible Sharon had ignored her. She now had her mother's figure, her heavy thighs, but her father's dark hair and complexion. When she stooped to pick up Sharon's flight bag, the backside was unmistakably familiar. Dark hairs were visible on her bare legs.

“It's been so long!” Sharon prattled, but Caroline did not reply until they approached the exit, and she had it calculated.

“Thirty-three years,” she said.

Sharon thought that impossible. She had been back, briefly, during the war, following Madge's first severe illness. Perhaps Caroline had not been there. She would have to think. Still, she might have said something further if the blast of heat at the entrance had not caught her breath. A shimmer of heat and light outlined Caroline's figure, the lumpy shadow that moved beside her. She turned to glance at Sharon, her lips compressed, then proceeded ahead of her across the parking area. Sharon lidded her eyes against the metallic glare. She almost thumped into Caroline, who said, “I left Carl and Crystal in the car. They came along for the ride.” Sharon did not trouble to ask whose children they were. They walked with bowed heads to a car with a dented front fender, a child's face at one lowered rear window. Both children had perspiring faces, protruding teeth. “Let it air out,” Caroline said, and cranked down the front windows. On the driver's side, a crumpled ironing pad covered a hole in the seat cushion. Curls of Blue Chip stamps were strewn across the dashboard. The short walk had left Sharon faintly dizzy. “Eileen don't like it much,” Caroline said, “but Bryan says he can't buy both cars and tractors.”

“Bryan?”

“He's their daddy,” she replied, looking at the children. “They just come along for the ride.”

“We come along for the ele-funt hall!” the girl hooted. Her unblinking button eyes seemed to challenge Sharon. The boy was less assured. Both wore T-shirts with faded football emblems.

The movement of air, as the car started, cooled the film of moisture on Sharon's face. “Lincoln's grown,” said Caroline. “On football weekends it's got almost two hundred thousand people.” Sharon registered disbelief. Through the grime-smeared windshield she could see little of the city. To miss the football traffic Caroline drove east, entering town on a street that skirted the fairgrounds. Sharon recognized nothing. Why were the elms so drab and rust-colored? “It's the blight,” Caroline said. “All the elms have got it. If they can't do something, they're going to have to destroy them.” Sharon would not have been able to say that. She would have said, “Something has to be done,” and left it at that. “If there's no parking,” Caroline went on, “I'm going to let you out and just drive around, then come back and pick you up. They want to see elephants, dinosaurs, or whatever.”