“He’ll be back.”
“Just like my daddy,” I said. “Livvy, your father’s gone, we’ll never see him again.”
“Stop that,” Mama said. “You don’t know how much sticks in their minds. You mind what you say in front of her.”
“But it’s true.”
“It’s not,” she said. “You won’t lose him that easy. He’ll be back.”
In the afternoon I took Livia with me while I picked pole beans and summer squash. Then we went back to the pear and apple orchard and played in the shade. After a while I took her over to Grandma Yount’s grave. We’ll all be here someday, I wanted to say, your grandma and your daddy and your mama, too. And you’ll be here when your time comes. This is our land, this is where we all end up.
I might have said this, it wouldn’t hurt for her to hear it, but for what Mama said. I guess it’s true you don’t know what sticks in their minds, or what they’ll make of it.
She liked it out there, Livia did. She crawled right up to Grandma Yount’s stone and ran her hand over it. You’d have thought she was trying to read it that way, like a blind person with Braille.
He didn’t come home for dinner. It was going on ten when I heard the car on the gravel. Mama and I were watching television. I got up and went into the kitchen to be there when he came in.
He was sober. He stood in the doorway and looked at me. Every emotion a man could have was there on his face.
“Look at you,” he said. “I did that to you.”
My face was worse than the day before. Bruises and swellings are like that, taking their time to ripen.
“You missed dinner,” I said, “but I saved some for you. I’ll heat up a plate for you.”
“I already ate. Tildie, I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t have to say anything.”
“No,” he said. “That’s not right. We have to talk.”
We slipped up to our room, leaving Mama to the television set. With our door closed we talked about the patterns we were caught in and how we seemed to have no control, like actors in a play with all their lines written for them by someone else. We could improvise, we could invent movements and gestures, we could read our lines in any of a number of ways, but the script was all written down and we couldn’t get away from it.
I mentioned counseling. He said, “I called that place in Fulton City. I wouldn’t tell them my name. Can you feature that? I called them for help but I was too ashamed to tell them my name.”
“What did they say?”
“They would want to see us once a week as a couple, and each of us individually once a week. Total price for the three sessions would be eighty dollars.”
“For how long?”
“I asked. They couldn’t say. They said it’s not the sort of change you can expect to make overnight.”
I said, “Eighty dollars a week. We can’t afford that.”
“I had the feeling they might reduce it some.”
“Did you make an appointment?”
“No. I thought I’d call tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to cut the trees,” I said. He looked at me. “To pay for it. I don’t want to cut Mama’s walnut trees.”
“Tildie, who brought up the damn trees?”
“We could sell the table,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“In the kitchen. The pine-top table, didn’t you say it was an antique? We could sell that.”
“Why would I want to sell the table?”
“You want to sell those trees bad enough. You as much as said that as soon as my mama dies you’ll be out back with a chain saw.”
“Don’t start with me,” he said. “Don’t you start with me, Tildie.”
“Or what? Or you’ll hit me? Oh, God, Dan, what are we doing? Fighting over how to pay for the counseling to keep from fighting. Dan, what’s the matter with us?”
I went to embrace him but he backed away from me. “Honey,” he said, “we better be real careful with this. They were telling me about escalating patterns of violence. I’m afraid of what could happen. I’m going to do what they said to do.”
“What’s that?”
“I want to pack some things,” he said. “That’s what I came home to do. There’s that Welcome Inn Motel outside of Caldwell, they say it’s not so bad and I believe they have weekly rates.”
“No,” I said. “No.”
“They said it’s best. Especially if we’re going to start counseling, because that brings everything up and out into the open, and it threatens the part of us that wants to be in this pattern. Tildie, from what they said it’d be dangerous for us to be together right now.”
“You can’t leave,” I said.
“I wouldn’t be five miles away. I’d be coming for dinner some nights, we’d be going to a movie now and then. It’s not like—”
“We can’t afford it,” I said. “Dan, how can we afford it? Eighty dollars a week for the counseling and God knows how much for the motel, and you’d be having most of your meals out, and how can we afford it? You’ve got a decent job but you don’t make that kind of money.”
His eyes hardened but he breathed in and out, in and out, and said, “Tildie, just talking like this is a strain, don’t you see that? We can afford it, we’ll find a way to afford it. Tildie, don’t grab on to my arm like that, you know what it does to me. Tildie, stop it, will you for God’s sake stop it?”
I put my arms around my own self and hugged myself. I was shaking. My hands just wanted to take hold of his arm. What was so bad about holding on to your husband’s arm? What was wrong with that?
“Don’t go,” I said.
“I have to.”
“Not now. It’s late, they won’t have any rooms left anyhow. Wait until morning. Can’t you wait until morning?”
“I was just going to get some of my things and go.”
“Go in the morning. Don’t you want to see Livvy before you go? She’s your daughter, don’t you want to say good-bye to her?”
“I’m not leaving, Tildie. I’m just staying a few miles from here so we’ll have a chance to keep from destroying ourselves. My God, Tildie, I don’t want to leave you. That’s the whole point, don’t you see that?”
“Stay until morning,” I said. “Please?”
“And will we go through this again in the morning?”
“No,” I said. “I promise.”
We were both restless, but then we made love and that settled him, and soon he was sleeping. I couldn’t sleep, though. I lay there for a time, and then I put a robe on and went down to the kitchen and sat there for a long time, thinking of patterns, thinking of ways to escape them. And then I went back up the stairs to the bedroom again.
I was in the kitchen the next morning before Livia woke up. I was there when Mama came down, and her eyes widened at the sight of me. She started to say something but then I guess she saw something in my eyes and she stayed silent.
I said, “Mama, we have to call the police. You’ll mind the baby when they come for me. Will you do that?”
“Oh, Tildie,” she said.
I led her up the stairs again and into our bedroom. Dan lay facedown, the way he always slept. I drew the sheet down and showed her where I’d stabbed him, slipping the kitchen knife between two ribs and into the heart. The knife lay on the table beside the bed. I had wiped the blood from it. There had not been very much blood to wipe.
“He was going to leave,” I said, “and I couldn’t bear it, Mama. And I thought, Now he won’t leave, now he’ll never leave me. I thought, This is a way to break the pattern. Isn’t that crazy, Mama? It doesn’t make any sense, does it?”