"Well, then, I guess that's that."
Michael turned and faced her. "Then I can have it? This room?"
Janet nodded, the odd tension she had been feeling in the room, and in herself and Michael, suddenly evaporating. She smiled. "And it's a good thing you wanted it. I was afraid I was going to have to fight you for the other big one."
"I'd have lost," Michael replied.
"But you'd have argued," Janet observed.
Michael was silent for a few seconds, apparently thinking about it. Finally, he shook his head. "Maybe last week." His voice was quiet, and Janet tensed, certain that he was about to say something she didn't want to hear. "Last week, you'd have had Dad on your side, but now you don't." His dark blue eyes-Mark's eyes-held her own. "I'll try not to fight with you anymore, Mom."
"Fight?" Janet asked, feeling tears form in spite of herself. "We've never fought."
Michael shifted uncomfortably, and his gaze broke away from hers. "You know what I mean. Arguing, trying to get around you. I-well, I'm not gonna do that anymore."
Janet reached out to her son and took him in her arms, holding him tight.
"Thank you, Michael," she whispered. "We're going to be all right here, you and I. I know it. I can just feel it."
Then, as she felt Michael's arms tighten around her, she glanced once more out the window toward the barn that had so captured her son's attention.
There was a bleakness to it, deprivation and neglect that doused the spark of optimism she had just felt.
CHAPTER SIX
Janet hung up the phone, then moved pensively into the kitchen, where Anna, expertly maneuvering her chair with one hand, was sweeping the floor with the other. As Janet watched, Anna moved the pile of dust toward the open back door, then gave the chair a quick spin, catching the screen door with one of its handles and knocking it open. At the same time, a last whisk of the broom sent the accumulated dirt flying into the backyard. As the screen door slammed shut, she turned the chair back to face Janet. "It took me two months to learn how to do that," she said in a voice that carried with it no emotion whatsoever.
Janet shook her head. "I wish you'd let me help-"
But Anna had already rolled across the kitchen to put the broom away. "I've been doing it for years." She wheeled herself over to the table, and gestured for Janet to join her. "Well, is it all taken care of?"
Janet nodded. "I guess so, but I'm still not certain I'm doing the right thing."
Anna shrugged. "It's done, anyway, and believe me, it's a lot easier to go along with Amos than to try to do it your way. Besides, I'm afraid he's right-it doesn't make any sense for you to go back to New York just to pack up. All you'd do is wear yourself out, and we don't want you to do that, do we? Carrying a baby always has its risks, you know."
Though there was nothing in Anna's voice to indicate that she was thinking of her own last pregnancy, Janet decided to use her mother-in-law's words as an opening. "Laura told me what happened," she said, softly. When Anna made no response, she pressed a little harder. "The night Mark left-"
Suddenly understanding, Anna's eyes hardened. "Laura had no right to burden you with that," she said. "Besides, she doesn't know the first thing about it. She was just a child."
"But she wasn't burdening me," Janet protested. "She's frightened. We were talking about you, and I asked her what happened. So she told me. At least she told me about you losing your baby, and Mark never coming home again." Janet's voice dropped slightly. "And she said that you never told her exactly what happened that night. I think she's been terrified ever since. Terrified that the same thing might happen to her."
Anna stared at Janet for a few seconds, then shook her head. "She shouldn't worry," she said at last. And then Anna's voice took on the same tone of recitation Janet had heard from Laura. "All that happened to me was that I overworked myself and brought the labor on prematurely. It was a breech birth, and the cord wrapped around the baby's neck." She paused a moment, then: "That's what they told me, and that's what I believe," she finished. The emphasis in her voice, though, only made Janet certain there was something Anna was leaving out, something she was not about to talk about. Indeed, she had already wheeled herself out of the kitchen to the foot of the stairs, and was now calling to her husband and grandson.
"You mean we're not going back to New York at all ?" Michael asked. He'd sat in silence while Janet had explained to him that she'd decided to arrange for movers to pack them and let an agent handle the subleasing of the apartment. Now he was on his feet, his eyes stormy, a vein throbbing angrily in his forehead.
"It just seems best-" Janet began, but Michael cut her off.
"Best for who?" he demanded. "What about my friends? Don't I even get to say goodbye to them?"
"But you said goodbye when we came out here-"
"That was different!" Michael's voice began to rise., "When we left, we were coming back!"
Amos rose and moved toward the angry boy. "Michael! Don't talk to your mother in that tone of voice."
With no hesitation, Michael swung around to face his grandfather. "Don't tell me what to do," he said. "You're not my father!" Whirling around, his face contorted with fury, he stormed out of the dining room. Amos started to follow him, but Janet blocked his path.
"Let him go, Amos," she pleaded. "He didn't mean it. He's just upset, and he'll come back down to apologize."
"He can't talk that way," Amos said, his voice firm but bearing no trace of anger. "He can't talk that way to you, and he can't talk that way to me. And he'd better understand that right now." Moving around Janet, he, too, left the dining room. The two women watched each other warily, Janet knowing with all her instincts that Anna would back her husband up. But instead, the older woman seemed to sag in her chair.
"I'm sorry," she said. "I suppose I should have stopped him, but he believes children should be respectful, and even though I know that's old-fashioned, that's the way he is."
And he's right.
The thought skittered through Janet's mind, an alien idea long ago rejected by herself and her husband, and most of their friends. They were modern parents, ever-mindful of the tenderness of the young psyche, ever-striving to allow their son the same freedom of expression they themselves enjoyed. Mark, she knew, would not have reacted to Michael's outburst as his father had. Mark would have taken the time to explain the situation to Michael, and listened to Michael's point of view. And in the end he (and she) would have decided that the trauma of Michael having to leave his friends with no final goodbye outweighed the expense of that last trip to New York, even though logic dictated that they stay where they were.
But here, away from the city and its environment of advanced thinking and experimentation, the same thought kept drumming in Janet's head: Amos is right.
These people did things as they had always done them, and if they seemed in some ways backward or reactionary, they had other qualities that made up for it. They had a sense of community, of caring, that refugees to the cities had lost. They retained values that people of Janet's own environment had shed long ago and with no remorse.
There was a solidity to Amos, to all the people of Prairie Bend, that Janet was just beginning to realize she had missed in the years of her marriage.
She stood up and moved around to where Anna still sat, and rested one hand on the older woman's shoulder. "Thank you," she said quietly. "Thank you so much for all you're doing."
Anna covered Janet's hand with her own. "Don't be silly, dear. You're family. We're only doing what any family would do. And it's our pleasure. I lost Mark years ago, but at least now I have you and Michael."