Eleanor studied Heather’s face briefly. She was probably not even thirty. No doubt she was exceedingly good at designing computer programs.
This might have been the moment when Eleanor stepped over the line. She could even feel the familiar tightening in her chest. Her heartbeat quickened. Her face felt warm. It would be so easy to go to Crazyland now.
Only, she didn’t. Crazyland was a far-off country now. Holding firmly to her granddaughter, she knew this: she would not be visiting that place again.
The Mexican band had started playing again, and she spotted Cam, walking very slowly down to the spot where the chairs and the arbor were set up. He was wearing a suit jacket Eleanor recognized—the one he’d worn when they got married, and when they’d gone to the bank to take out a loan for a new furnace, and she’d been worried they’d get turned down. He’d worn it again when they went to court to sign the divorce decree.
She couldn’t see his face, only the back of his head as he reached the spot where the ceremony was set to take place. He was talking to Ursula, and to the two people—a woman, and a man who was clearly a priest—who appeared to have been enlisted to offer a blessing. They were looking at the sky, assessing the likelihood of rain, from the looks of things. The sky had been steadily darkening, and from the east they could make out the sound of thunder, closer now. There was a feeling in the air of a storm on the way.
Cam turned around briefly then, and for a moment, Eleanor wondered if this was not him at all, but his father, Roger, except Roger was dead. Cam’s body appeared to have shrunk that much; he looked that old. Always a lean man, he seemed close to skeletal now, his neck too thin for the shirt he was wearing, so a wide gap was visible between skin and fabric. You could have slid your whole hand in that space.
But the part that shocked her was Cam’s face. He was still a handsome man, but his cheeks were sunken. His skin had a gray cast to it, and his eyes bore the look of a person who has seen something visible only to himself. Something hard. He had always borne an air of detachment, but he seemed now to be someplace else altogether.
A bell sounded, signaling the time for whatever guests were still milling around to take their seats for the ceremony. Eleanor’s newfound granddaughter clung tight, studying Eleanor’s bird necklace, and for Eleanor, that was all that mattered. She studied the little girl’s face, with no impulse to locate in it a resemblance to her own three children. This was a new person; who she looked like was nobody but her own self.
Up until now, it was the Mexican band that had played for them, but now, from two speakers facing out to the assembled guests, came the recording of a song she actually knew. “A Simple Love,” by Melissa Etheridge. From the direction of the goat pen, the bride made her way across the field, preceded by Ursula and the other bridesmaids. Louise, still in Eleanor’s arms, and seeing Ursula at the front of the procession, waved and called out, “Mama.” She showed no signs of concern that it was Eleanor and not her mother holding her.
The bride, Teresa, had reached the spot in front of the assembled guests where Al stood, waiting for her in his dark blue suit—his hands folded in front of him, his eyes full of love.
The woman officiant welcomed the group—first in Spanish, then English. The woman—a friend of the bridal couple, ordained for the day—read a poem by Wendell Berry called “The Country of Marriage.” Off in the distance, the darkening clouds caused the assembled guests to look up at the sky again, but the rain was holding off.
Teresa’s brother Mateo read Sonnet 17 by Pablo Neruda.“Te amo sin saber cómo, ni cuándo, ni de dónde...”
Ursula read Elizabeth Barrett Browning. “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.” Eleanor looked over toward Cam as their daughter spoke the words. Hard to say if he remembered anotherwedding in this spot, another voice—his own—speaking the same words long ago.
The priest asked them if they agreed to a long list of promises, which they did, and pronounced them husband and wife. For a surprisingly long time, they kissed.
From where she stood at the back of the assembled guests—Louise nuzzling her neck and making bird sounds inspired by her necklace—Eleanor studied the face of the man she used to be married to, seated in the front row—present at the births of her children, absent at the moment their son entered the pond. They were back on the exact piece of land where they’d started out their marriage, thirty-three years earlier.
Here she was, in the place where the best things that ever happened in her life had taken place. Also the most awful. Always before, when she came back, the thought of all that had felt crushingly sad. But they’d survived, in one way or another. And the fact that this was so seemed now, suddenly, like a kind of miracle.
Al was in love. Toby had his goats and his chickens. He had his home on this farm. (And he could read now, and drive the tractor, and call up his classmate from Dr. Almendinger’s clinic, Kara, to talk about the new episode ofGlee.) Whatever bitterness Ursula still carried toward her mother, and no doubt she did—many people had issues with their mothers—it appeared that they might actually be speaking to each other again. More than that, maybe. With luck, Eleanor might actually get to be a grandmother to Louise, and the new baby none of them had met yet.
A thought came to her. Not a thought at all so much as a feeling. It was time to forgive her children’s father. And to ask for the same.
This was when they heard it—that sound, like an explosion of gunpowder, followed by a terrible cracking, a long, deep groan, like a piece of the earth breaking apart. Then came a crash, when whatever it was that broke fell to the ground. The sky lit up, then darkened. Now the rain came down. Whole sheets of it. So much rain it was hard to see what was going on.
“Oh, God,” someone cried out. Someone else:“Dios mío.”
“It’s okay,” Eleanor whispered to Louise, who was holding on to her very tightly now, but not crying. “I’ve got you.” From the top of the hill where the house sat they heard an enormous crash, the loudest yet.
Already drenched, they headed up the hill to survey the damage.
99.
One of the Great Things About Rocks
At first, after it had fallen, all anyone could take in was the sight of the felled ash tree, Old Ashworthy, struck by lightning—now lying across the front yard, branches splayed in all directions.
“Some tree,” Toby said. With one minor variation, this was the same thing Charlotte the spider had written, in her web, of Wilbur the pig, in his all-time favorite book from his childhood.
They all just stood there, too stunned to say anything more. Then they noticed the rest.
Old Ashworthy had been a tree of such height and breadth that for a few moments the sight of it toppled had obscured what lay beneath. Now, through the vast expanse of broken branches and leaves, they recognized the house, or what was left of it. Through the tangle, Eleanor could make out pieces of roof, and the dormer and a couple of shattered casement windows. The chimney was still standing, but everything that surrounded it had been crushed: roof demolished, walls flattened, furniture smashed, shards of Fiesta ware dishes and pieces of furniture. A single beam that had spanned the length of what was once her kitchen—spaghetti carbonara every Sunday, their tradition—upended so it was pointing skyward, like an arrow.
After they’d taken it all in—the splintered trunk, the splayed branches, the tangle of limbs and leaves, and everything that lay beneath all that, which was an entire house, demolished—beds, tables, chairs, dishes, dresses, books, old records and CDs, summer hats and winter boots, flyswatters, electric fans, a hot water bottle, a Cabbage Patch doll, a sink, a waffle iron, a one-quarter-size violin—after they took it in (but really, who could?), a surprising thing happened.
A person might have expected that the one to step forward and say something at such a moment would have been Cam. Or possiblyAl. Ursula, maybe—forever the caretaker. The one who had designated herself as the fixer of all things broken.
