Upstairs, sunlight came through the windows and spilled into the hallway. Little dust bunnies were gathered up and down the floor. “Oh dear,” Patty said. She said that a few times, sitting on her bed. “Oh dear, oh dear,” she said.
It was a twenty-mile ride to the town of Hanston, and the sun was still bright as Patty drove by the fields, some with the little plants of corn, some brown, one field was being plowed under as she drove by. Then she came to the place where there were wind turbines, over a hundred of them along the horizon, these huge white windmills that had been put up across the land almost ten years earlier. They fascinated Patty, they always had, their long white arms twirling the air all at the same speed but otherwise without synchronicity. There was a lawsuit now, she remembered, there were often lawsuits, about the destruction of birds and deer and farmland, but Patty favored the large white things whose skinny arms moved against the sky in that slightly wacky way to make energy—and then they were behind her, and once again were only the fields with the little corn plants and the fresh bright soybeans. These were the very cornfields—in their summer fullness—where, by the age of fifteen, she had allowed boys to thrust themselves against her, their lips huge-seeming, rubbery, their things bulging through their pants, and she would gasp and offer her neck to be kissed and grind herself against them, but—really?—she couldn’t stand it she couldn’t stand it she couldn’t stand it.
Patty came into the town that had changed very little since she had grown up there. There were the old-fashioned-looking streetlamps, black, with their lights in a box at the top. And there were the two restaurants, the gift shop, the investment firm, the clothing store—all had the same green awnings and signs in black and white. In order to get to her mother’s house she had to drive past the home she had grown up in, a beautiful red house with black shutters and a wide porch with a porch swing on it. Patty had sat on that swing with her mother for hours at a time as a young child, curled against her mother’s stomach, crumpling the fabric of her mother’s dress, her mother’s laughter above her head. Her father had lived in that house until he died, which had been one year before Sibby died. Now a family with lots of children owned the house, and Patty always—every single time she drove by it—looked the other way. Through the town and just a mile past was her mother’s small white house. As Patty turned in to the driveway, she saw her mother peering through the front curtain, then could hear her cane thump against the floor as Patty unlocked the side door and let herself in. Her mother had become as little as Patty had become big. This is what Patty thought each time she saw her mother now. “Hey,” Patty said, and stooped, and kissed the air beside her mother. Standing straight, she said, “I brought you some food.”
“I don’t need food.” Her mother had on a terrycloth bathrobe, and she gave the belt a tug.
Patty unpacked the meatloaf and the coleslaw and the mashed potatoes, and put them in the refrigerator. “You need to eat something,” Patty said.
“I won’t eat anything sitting alone. Can you stay and eat with me?” Her mother looked up at her through her large glasses, which had slipped partway down her nose. “Pretty please?” Patty closed her eyes briefly, then nodded.
As Patty set the table, her mother sat in a chair, her legs apart beneath the robe, looking up at Patty. “It’s awfully good to see you. I never see you anymore.”
“I was here three days ago,” Patty said. Her mother’s thin hair—the scalp so visible—stayed in Patty’s mind as she turned toward the counter, and inside she felt herself crumble. Returning to the table, pulling a chair up, she said, “We have to talk about you going into the Golden Leaf. Remember we talked about that?” Confusion seemed to appear on her mother’s face; she shook her head slowly. “Did you get dressed today?” Patty asked.
Her mother looked down at the lap of her bathrobe and then up at Patty once more. “No,” she said.
At a conference in St. Louis, Patty had met her husband. The conference was on dealing with children from low-income homes, but Sebastian was not part of that. He was staying in the hotel room next to Patty’s; there for a conference himself, he was a mechanical engineer. “Hello again!” Patty had said as they both stepped from their rooms. She had seen him at night going into his room when she went into hers. What it was about him, she could not have said, but he made her feel completely comfortable; she was already gaining weight from her antidepressants, and she had once stopped a wedding from happening only weeks before she was to be married. Sebastian would not even look at her the first few times they spoke. But he was a nice-looking man, tall, thin, his face was gaunt, his hair on the longer side. His eyebrows were so thick they were like one line across his forehead, his eyes indented beneath his brow. She just liked him. And by the end of the conference she had obtained his email address, and their correspondence was something she’d never forget. Within just a few weeks he wrote, There’s something you should know about me, Patty, if we’re going to be friends. And then a few days later: Things happened to me, he wrote. Awful things. They’ve made me different from other people. He lived in Missouri, and when she wrote and asked him to come to Carlisle, Illinois, she was surprised that he agreed. After that, they were together. How had she known—she hadn’t known—that he had been taken as a boy again and again and again by his stepfather? Sebastian could hardly stand being with people, but it was very early on that he looked at her and told her in some detail what had happened to him, and he said to her, Patty, I love you, but I cannot do it. I just cannot do that, I wish I could. And she said, “That’s okay, I can’t stand it either.”
In their marriage bed they held hands, and never went any further. Often, during the first years especially, he had terrible dreams, and he would kick the covers and squeal, it was a frightening sound. She noticed that he was aroused when this happened, and she was always sure to touch only his shoulders until he calmed down. Then she rubbed his forehead. “It’s okay, honey,” she always said. He would stare at the ceiling, his hands in fists. Thank you, he said. Turning his face toward her, Thank you, Patty, he said.
—
“Tell me, tell me. Smell me. How are you?” Her mother poked a forkful of meatloaf into her mouth.
“I’m well. I’m going to see Angelina tomorrow night. Her husband’s left her.” Patty put mashed potatoes on her meatloaf, then put butter on the mashed potatoes.
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.” Her mother placed her fork on the table and looked at her quizzically.
“Angelina, she’s one of the Mumford girls.”
“Huh.” Her mother nodded slowly. “Oh, I know. Her mother was Mary Mumford. Sure. She wasn’t much.”
“Who wasn’t much? Angelina’s a great person. I always thought her mother was really nice.”
“Oh, she was nice. She just wasn’t much. I think she came from Mississippi originally. She married that Mumford boy, he was rich, and then she had all those girls and plenty of money.”
Patty opened her mouth. She was going to ask if her mother remembered that Mary Mumford had left that rich husband only a few years ago, in her seventies, did she remember that? But Patty wouldn’t ask. She would not tell her mother that she and Angelina had become friends over it: mothers leaving.
I wanted to kill him, Sebastian had told Patty. I really did want to kill him. “Of course you did,” she had said. And I wanted to kill my mother too, he said. And Patty said, “Of course you did.”
—