A friend is someone you tell the truth to, but Susie stops herself from doing that because the truth is, she’s not going to quit worrying.
“I wish I could be happy for you,” Susie says later, after they’ve finished their tea, along with the entire bag of cookies.
“Try to be,” March says, as she walks Susie to the door, then out to the porch.
March throws her arms around her old friend, and they stand there for a while, even though the weather has taken a turn and is much colder than had been predicted. All along the stone fences, the bittersweet berries have become orange. People will soon be covering their beds with their heaviest quilts, their warmest blankets. Cats won’t be forced out for the night, and those people in town who take their dogs for a late walk will see their breath form into clouds. Susie Justice will have to clear the frost off her windshield with the palm of her hand before she gets into her truck. As she drives away, she’ll roll down her window. She’ll bite her tongue and say no more; she’ll simply wave to March, who’s out there on the porch, dressed only in her jeans and her sweater, with no coat and no gloves and no protection from the cold.
15
Richard Cooper arrived today, in spite of a storm that was rattling up and down the East Coast. Ken Helm picked him up at Logan, and later that evening, at the bar of the Lyon Cafe, Ken tells people he would have recognized Richard anywhere. Sure, Richard’s not a kid anymore, but he looks the same anyway. He’s tall and thin, the way all the Coopers were, and he’s just as distracted as ever, although he can certainly tell a good joke, Ken Helm will attest to that. Richard Cooper’s got thousands of bug jokes he’s picked up at entomology conferences. He’s got a Why did the beetle cross the road? series which cracks up his students completely, although right now he tends to favor tick jokes. What’s the difference between a tick and a lawyer? he asked Ken Helm as they were driving up on I-95. It’s one he heard at a conference in Spokane last winter. The tick drops off after it’s sucked your blood.
Richard’s students appreciate him for more than his jokes. They respect him for all those aspects of his personality which most annoy March. He gets lost in what he does and can discuss a single topic, a variety of fungus-inhabiting Tenebrionidae, for instance, for hours. He’s too kindhearted, and doesn’t stand up for himself. As a graduate student, several discoveries he made in the field were claimed by his adviser, but Richard never cared about such things as who gets credit-it’s the discovery that matters to him. It’s doing the right thing. When he believes in something, he won’t back down. He’s tenacious as hell when he has to be, not unlike the trout-stream beetle, which will cling to anything, defying icy streams and swift currents in order to get where it is convinced it must go.
This clarity, this single-mindedness of purpose, is the reason why Belinda inherited Guardian Farm and Richard was left with nothing. His father was trying to teach him a lesson about obedience, and before Mr. Cooper could reverse his rash decision to disinherit his son both he and Richard’s mother were killed at the turn onto Route 22. For all these years he’s been away, Richard has only come back for funerals. His parents. His sister. His sister’s only child. Now they have laid Judith Dale to rest in the same cemetery, and Richard plans to pay his respects at the grave site. But he doesn’t have long to do so. It’s late Friday afternoon when he arrives, and he has to present a lecture to his graduate seminar on Monday morning. He hasn’t asked his neighbors to feed the stray cat living in his garage or bring in his mail. He has his return ticket for the noon plane on Sunday, and he’s made reservations for March and Gwen as well. Just in case.
If luck is on his side, they’ll all be out of here in less than forty-eight hours. Yes, it’s true, he believes in fate. He’s a scientist who happens to be convinced of the reality of destiny. His colleagues might mock this philosophy, but then let them explain why one sand beetle wanders into a spider’s web while another passes by, unharmed. Love, it now seems, is not what Richard thought it would be. It’s thicker and heavier and much more complicated than he would ever have imagined. He knows that his wife has been with another man, a man he happens to despise and holds responsible for his sister’s death-and yet here he is, chatting with Ken Helm, insisting that Ken take the forty bucks he’s offering for fetching him from the airport. Love has made him surprise himself. He would never have believed it possible, but it’s turned out that he is a man who can walk up to a closed door on a murky November day, wearing his one good suit, and knock without hesitation, waiting while the rain comes down around him, even though he’s not wanted. He can do this and not think twice, just the way he can spend hours watching a wounded cedar beetle and weep over its rare beauty, as well as its agony.
Richard is certain that other species fall in love-primates, of course, and canines-but he has wondered about his beetles. There are people who would surely get a chuckle out of the mere suggestion, but in Richard’s opinion it’s pure vanity to presume that love exists only on our terms. A red leaf may be the universe for the tortoise beetle or the ladybird. A single touch the ecstasy of a lifetime. And so, here he is, in love despite everything. It is he, stupider than any beetle, and far more obstinate, who has traveled three thousand miles, even though he fully expects to be turned away.
Gwen answers the door, and as soon as she sees Richard she throws her arms around him.
“Daddy,” she cries, although he doesn’t remember her calling him this before-it was Pop, he thinks, or Pa.
Gwen pulls Richard into the hallway, where a little white terrier jumps on his legs.
“Who is this?” Richard asks. He puts down his overnight case, then crouches to pet the dog.
“It’s Sister.” Gwen cannot believe how glad she is to see her father. He seems so real. So him. “She belonged to Mrs. Dale.”
“Well, Sister,” Richard says. The dog has politely sat down before him, and now tilts its head to listen when he speaks. “How do you do?”
They do like hell, if the truth be known. All of a sudden, Gwen is the one in charge of everything, like it or not. Her mother once saw to all of the chores, but no longer. March can’t seem to deal with the trivial details of domestic life, they seem beyond her somehow, small but impossible tasks. If Gwen doesn’t do her own laundry, she has no clothes. If she doesn’t go food shopping or make the beds, no one else will. Once, while hurrying through the village on her way to meet her friend Chris, Gwen passed by some woman who had her collar turned up and a dreamy look on her face, and it wasn’t until Gwen and Chris had ordered french fries and Cokes at the Bluebird Coffee Shop that she realized the woman she’d walked past was her mother.
Gwen is now responsible for herself in some deep, irrevocable way. There is no one to tell her what to do; for all intents and purposes, she’s on her own. And although this is exactly what she once thought she wanted, her situation now brings her to tears.
“What’s wrong?” her father asks, but how can she tell him?
“I’m fine,” Gwen insists. “I’m just glad to see you.”
“You look wonderful,” Richard tells his daughter. Although seeing her so grown-up and so pretty without all that makeup makes him realize how much a person can change in a short period of time. Wasn’t it only weeks ago that he worried constantly? That he feared she would return home with some new part of her body pierced and some new drug in her backpack?
Richard hangs his wet raincoat in the closet. His shoes are soaked, as are the cuffs of his slacks, but he will simply have to do. He can’t make himself any more presentable before seeing March.
“Well?” he says when he turns back to Gwen.