I hear Sam’s voice, clear as a church bell in my mind (though I know he’s out plowing the east fields, getting ready to plant the corn).
Finished,he says.
We’re all finished.
I glance down and see my own reflection in the rippling water, but there’s blood on my chest, blooming like a flower.
I gasp, totter backward, nearly falling out of my chair.
“What is it?” Vera asks. “Is it my Alan?”
“Yes,” I say, sitting up, collecting myself, looking back down at the front of my sweater, which is clean, spotless.
“He came to me with such force, it caught me off guard,” I tell her. “He really loves you. He misses that cake you used to make.”
A guess on my part, but I’m good at this, and the smile on Vera’s face shows I’ve gotten it right again.
“Oh!” she cries. “The brown sugar cake! Heavens, yes! I haven’t made that in ages! I think I’ll go home and make some this afternoon.”
“He’d like that,” I tell her, daring another look down at my bowl. I see only my own dim reflection. “He’s smiling at you. Can you feel him smiling down at you?”
“Yes,” she says. “Yes, I can.”
She reaches into her patent leather purse, pulls out forty dollars and passes it to me. Then she grabs another ten and slips it into my hand. “Thank you, Ann,” she says, her hand dry and powdery in my own. “This means so much to me.”
And at moments like this, I think,Is it so wrong, what I do? Lying, pretending, inventing small fictions based on little flashes I may or may not receive?I see how happy I make Miss Vera, the spring in her step as she hurries out the door to make her cake, and I think,I am doing good work. I am shining a positive light on the world.
. . .
I’m busy making dinner in the kitchen when Sam comes in later.
“Daddy,” the children chirp, crowding him like hungry birds. I see that even though it’s not yet five, Sam’s been drinking. He totters on his feet, leaning this way and that, trying to correct his balance, to remain upright. He’s got a bottle stashed in the barn. One in the workshop, too. They’re all over, so he’ll never be thirsty.
“Don’t pester your father,” I tell the children. “He’s been working all day. Go on in the living room. I’ll call you when supper’s ready.”
They mind so well, my children.
They’ve learned.
Learned to be a little fearful of their daddy, to keep their distance when he’s drinking.
Once they’ve left, I look him in the eye. “Everything okay?” I ask. I hate how timid my voice sounds. How quickly I turn into a little mouse around him.
And he laughs. He laughs a bitter, mirthless laugh, and his hot bourbon-fueled breath fills the kitchen, turns the air into a dangerous, combustible thing. All we’d need is a match and we’d all go up with a bang.
He staggers out of the kitchen, bumping against a chair, hitting the wall as he careens around the corner toward our bedroom. I hear him in there, opening drawers. Maybe he’s putting on his pajamas. Maybe he’s tired and sick and sick and tired and just wants to lie down, wants the day to be over, mercifully over.
But then I hear his footsteps move into the living room.
And Jason, he says, “Daddy, what’re you doing with Sweet Melissa?”
And there’s that laugh again, that empty haunting laugh that fills the hall as I start to run, run from the kitchen toward the living room, over the carpet; I’m going faster than I ever have in my life, past the door to the cellar, the bedrooms, the bathroom with the leaking faucet, and into the living room, where Sam is standing by the mantel, holding his little silver pistol. His laugh turns into a hum, a little song, and at last I can make out the words:
“Finished,” he says. “We’re all finished.”
I step toward him, hands outstretched. “Sam,” I say. “My darling.”
And he raises the gun and fires.
