“I did.”
“I don’t remember.” The girl was not belligerent.
“After you asked why I had no children and said I was a virgin and called me Fatty Patty, I called you a piece of filth.”
The girl watched her with suspicion.
“You are not a piece of filth.” Patty waited, and the girl waited, and then Patty said, “When I was growing up in Hanston, my father was a manager of a feed corn farm and we had plenty of money. We were comfortable, you’d call it. We had enough money. I have no business calling you—calling anyone—a piece of filth.”
The girl shrugged. “I am.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Well, I guess you were angry.”
“Of course I was angry. You were really rude to me. But that did not give me the right to say what I said.”
The girl seemed tired; she had circles under her eyes. “I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said. “I wouldn’t think about it anymore if I were you.”
“Listen,” Patty said. “You have very good scores and excellent grades. You could go to school if you wanted to. Do you want to?”
The girl looked vaguely surprised. She shrugged. “I dunno.”
“My husband,” Patty said, “thought he was filth.”
The girl looked at her. After a moment she said, “He did?”
“He did. Because of things that had happened to him.”
The girl looked at Patty with large, sad-looking eyes. She finally let out a long sigh. “Oh boy,” she said. “Well. I’m sorry I said that shit about you. That stuff about you.”
Patty said, “You’re sixteen.”
“Fifteen.”
“You’re fifteen. I’m the adult, and I’m the one who did something wrong.”
Patty was startled to see that tears had begun to slip down the girl’s face, and the girl wiped them with her hand. “I’m just tired,” Lila said. “I’m just so tired.”
Patty got up and closed the door to her office. “Sweetie,” she said. “Listen to me, honey. I can do something for you. I can get you into a school. There will be money somewhere. Your grades are excellent, like I said. I was surprised to see your grades, and your scores are really high. My grades weren’t as good as yours are, and I went to school because my parents could afford to send me. But I can get you into a school, and you can go.”
The girl put her head down on her arms on Patty’s desk. Her shoulders shook. In a few minutes she said, looking up, her face wet, “I’m sorry. But when someone’s nice to me— Oh God, it just kills me.”
“That’s okay,” Patty said.
“No, it’s not.” The girl wept again, steadily and with noise. “Oh God,” she said, wiping at her face.
Patty handed her a tissue. “It’s okay. I’m telling you. It is all going to be okay.”
The sun was bright, washing over the steps of the post office as Patty walked up them that afternoon. In the post office was Charlie Macauley. “Hi, Patty,” he said, and nodded.
“Charlie Macauley,” she said. “I’m seeing you everywhere these days. How are you?”
“Surviving.” He was headed for the door.
She checked her mailbox, pulled from it the mail, and was aware that he had left. But when she walked outside he was sitting on the steps, and to her surprise—only it was not that surprising—she sat down next to him. “Whoa,” she said, “I may not be able to get up again.” The step was cement, and she felt the chill of it through her pants, though the sun shone down.
Charlie shrugged. “So don’t. Let’s just sit.”
Later, for years to come, Patty would go over it in her mind, their sitting on the steps, how it seemed outside of time. Across the street was the hardware store, and beyond that was a blue house, the side of it lit with the afternoon sun. It was the tall white windmills that came to her mind. How their skinny long arms all turned, but never together, except for just once in a while two of them would be turning in unison, their arms poised at the same place in the sky.
Eventually Charlie said, “You doing okay these days, Patty?”
She said, “I am, I’m fine,” and turned to look at him. His eyes seemed to go back forever, they were that deep.
After a few moments Charlie said, “You’re a Midwestern girl, so you say things are fine. But they may not always be fine.”
She said nothing, watching him. She saw how right above his Adam’s apple he had forgotten to shave; a few white whiskers were there.
“You sure don’t have to tell me what’s not fine,” he said, looking straight ahead now, “and I’m sure not going to ask. I’m just here to say that sometimes”—and he turned his eyes back to hers, his eyes were pale blue, she noticed—“that sometimes things aren’t so fine, no siree bob. They aren’t always fine.”
Oh, she wanted to say, wanting to put her hand on his. Because it was himself he was speaking of, this came to her then. Oh, Charlie, she wanted to say. But she sat next to him quietly, and a car went by on Main Street, then another. “Lucy Barton wrote a memoir,” Patty finally said.
“Lucy Barton.” Charlie stared straight ahead, squinted. “The Barton kids, Jesus, that poor boy, the oldest kid.” He shook his head just slightly. “Jesus Christ. Poor kids. Jesus H. Christ.” He looked at Patty. “I suppose it’s a sad book?”
“It’s not. At least I didn’t think so.” Patty thought about this. She said, “It made me feel better, it made me feel much less alone.”
Charlie shook his head. “Oh no. No, we’re always alone.”
For quite a while they sat in companionable silence with the sun beating down on them. Then Patty said, “We’re not always alone.”
Charlie turned to look at her. He said nothing.
“Can I ask you?” Patty said. “Did people think my husband was strange?”
Charlie waited a moment, as though considering this. “Maybe. I’m the last person around here to know what people think. Sebastian seemed to me to be a good man. In pain. He was in pain.”
“Yuh. He was.” Patty nodded.
Charlie said, “I’m sorry about that.”
“I know you are.” The sun splashed brightly against the blue house.
After many moments had gone by, Charlie turned again to look at her. He opened his mouth as though about to say something, but then he shook his head and closed his mouth once more. Patty felt—without knowing what it was—that she understood what he was going to say.
She touched his arm just briefly, and in the sun they sat.
Cracked
When Linda Peterson-Cornell saw the woman who would be staying in their home for the week, she thought: Oh, this will be the one. The woman’s name was Yvonne Tuttle, and she had been brought to the house by another woman from the photography festival, Karen-Lucie Toth, who stood silently beside Yvonne as Linda welcomed her. Yvonne was very tall and had slightly wavy brown hair that went to her shoulders; her face had possibly been quite pretty ten years earlier. Now there were lines beneath the eyes that diminished their blue gaze, and also Yvonne wore too much makeup for someone who was clearly past forty—Linda was fifty-five. Yvonne’s sandals, with high cork wedges, made her even taller. They gave away to Linda the fact that Yvonne had, in her youth, most likely not come from much. Shoes always gave you away.