She couldn’t believe he’d left in the middle of the night without a word.
She’d spent thirteen years living with him, sharing his bed at night, bearing his children. She’d known he’d never been in love with her, but this?
She walked out of her room, saw the family—her family, their family— seated at the table, talking. Ant was retelling his grape-finding story.
Rose looked up, saw Elsa, and frowned. “Elsa?”
Elsa wanted to tell Rose this terrible thing and be held, but she couldn’t say anything until she was sure. Maybe he had walked to town for … something.
With all of his belongings.
“I have … errands,” Elsa said, seeing Rose’s disbelief.
Elsa hurried out of the house and grabbed Loreda’s bicycle. Climbing aboard, she pedaled through the thick dirt that layered the driveway, her legs working hard. More than once she had to zigzag around the dead branches of the fallen trees, which had been exposed in the last dust storm. She stopped at the mailbox, looked in. Nothing.
On the way to town, she didn’t see a single automobile or wagon out on the road in this heat. Birds congregated on the telephone wires overhead, chattered down at her. Several cows and horses roamed free, plaintively moaning for food and water. Unable to butcher or care for their animals, farmers had let them go to fend for themselves.
By the time she reached Lonesome Tree, her hair had worked itself free from the pins she’d used to hold it back from her face, and her kerchief was damp.
On Main Street, she stopped. A tumbleweed rolled past her, scraped her bare calf. Lonesome Tree lay anesthetized before her, shops boarded up, nothing green, the town’s namesake cottonwood half dead; up and down the street boards had been ripped away by the wind.
She pedaled toward the train depot and got off the bike. Maybe he was still here.
Inside was a room full of empty benches. A dirty floor. A whites-only water fountain.
She walked to the ticket window. Behind a small, arched opening sat a man in a dusty white shirt with black elbow guards.
“Hello, Mr. McElvaine.”
“Heya, Miz Martinelli,” the man said.
“Was my husband here recently? Did he buy a ticket?” He looked down at the papers on his desk.
“Please, sir. Do not make me interrogate you. This is humiliating enough for me, wouldn’t you agree?”
“He didn’t have any money.”
“Did he say where he wanted to go?” “You don’t want me to say.”
“I do.”
He sighed and looked up at her. “He said, ‘Anywhere but here.’” “He said that?”
“If it helps, he pret’ near looked ready to cry.”
The man pulled out a crumpled, stained envelope and pushed it through the iron bars of the ticket window. “He said to give you this.”
“He knew I’d come?” “Wives always do.”
She drew in a steadying breath. “So, if he had no money, maybe—” “He done what they all do.”
“All?”
“Men all over the county been leavin’ their families. Families been abandonin’ their kids and kin. I never seen nothing like it. A man over in Cimarron County kilt his whole family ’fore he left.”
“Where do they go with no money?”
“West, ma’am. Most of ’em. They jump on the first train that comes through town.”
“Maybe he’ll come back.”
The man sighed. “I ain’t seen one of ’em come back yet.”
 |
ELSA STOOD IN FRONT of the depot. Slowly, as if it were combustible, she opened Rafe’s letter. The paper was wrinkled and dusty and appeared blotched by moisture. His tears?
Elsa,
I’m sorry. I know the words don’t matter, may be worse than nothing.
I’m dying here, that’s all I know. One more day on this farm and I might put a gun to my head. I’m weak. You are strong. You love this land and this life in a way I never could.
Tell my parents and my children I love them. You are all better off without me. Please, don’t look for me. I don’t want to be found. I don’t know where I’m going anyway.
R
Elsa couldn’t even cry.
Heartache had been a part of her life so long it had become as familiar as the color of her hair or the slight curve in her spine. Sometimes it was the lens through which she viewed her world and sometimes it was the blindfold she wore so she didn’t see. But it was always there. She knew it was her own fault, somehow, her doing, even though in all her desperate musings for the foundation of it, she’d never been able to see the flaw in herself that had proven to be so defining. Her parents had seen it. Her father, certainly. And her younger, more beautiful sisters, too. They had all sensed the lack in Elsa. Loreda certainly saw it.
Everyone—including Elsa—had assumed she would live an apologetic life, hidden among the needs of other, more vibrant people. The caretaker, the tender, the woman left behind to keep the home fires burning.
And then she had met Rafe.
Her handsome, charming, moody husband. “Hold your head up,” she said out loud.
She had children to think about. Two small people who needed to be comforted in the wake of their father’s betrayal.
Children who would grow up knowing that their father had abandoned them at this tender time.
Children who, like Elsa, would be shaped by heartache.
|
BY THE TIME ELSA got back to the farm, she felt as if she were a machine slowly breaking down. Her family was in the house, bustling about. Rose and Loreda were in the kitchen, making pasta, and Ant and Tony were in the sitting room, rubbing oil into the straps of a leather harness.
The children’s lives would never be the same after today. Their opinions of everything would change, but especially their opinions of themselves, of the durability of love and the truth of their family. They would know forever that their father hadn’t loved their mother—or them—enough to stay with them through hard times.
What did a good mother do in this circumstance? Did she tell the harsh, ugly truth?
Or was a lie better?
If Elsa lied to protect her children from Rafe’s selfishness and to protect Rafe from their resentment, it might be a long while before the truth came out, if it ever did.
Elsa walked past Tony and Ant in the sitting room and went into the kitchen, where her daughter was working the pasta dough on the flour- dusted table. Elsa squeezed her daughter’s thin shoulder. It was all she could do not to pull her into her arms for a fierce hug, but frankly, Elsa couldn’t handle another rejection right now.
Loreda pulled away. “Where’s Daddy?”
“Yeah,” Ant said from the sitting room, “where is he? I wanna show him the arrowhead Grandpa and I found.”
Rose was at the stove, adding salt to a pot filled with water. She looked at Elsa and turned off the burner.
“Have you been crying?” Loreda asked.
“It’s just watery eyes from all the dust,” Elsa said, forcing a tight smile. “Can you kids go look for potatoes? I need to talk to Grandma and Grandpa.”
“Now?” Loreda whined. “I hate doing that.” “Now,” Elsa said. “Take your brother.”
“Come on, Ant,” Loreda said, pushing the dough away from her, “let’s go root through the dirt like pigs.”
Ant giggled. “I like bein’ a pig.” “You would.”
The kids shuffled out of the house and banged the door shut behind them.
Rose stared at Elsa. “You’re scaring me.”
Elsa headed into the sitting room, went straight to Tony’s bottle of rye, and poured herself a drink.
It tasted awful enough that she poured a second one and drank that, too. “Madonna mia,” Rose said quietly. “I have never seen you take one
drink in all these years, and now you take two.”
Rose came up behind Elsa, put a hand on her shoulder.
“Elsa,” Tony said, putting the harness aside and standing up. “What is it?”
“It’s Rafe.”
“Rafe?” Rose frowned. “He left,” Elsa said.
“Rafe left?” Tony said. “To go where?” “He left,” Elsa said tiredly.
“Back to that damn tavern?” Tony said. “I told him—”
“No,” Elsa said. “He left Lonesome Tree. On a train. Or so I’m told.”
Rose stared at Elsa. “He left? No. He wouldn’t do that. I know he’s unhappy, but…”
“For God’s sake, Rose,” Tony said. “We are all unhappy. Dirt is raining from the sky. The trees are falling over dead. Animals are dying. We’re all unhappy.”
“He wanted to go to California,” Elsa said. “I said no. It was a mistake. I was going to talk to him about it, but…” She pulled the letter out of her pocket and handed it to them.
Rose took it in trembling hands and read it, her lips moving silently over the words. Tears filled her eyes when she looked up.
“Son of a bitch,” Tony said, crumpling the letter. “That’s what comes of coddling the boy.”
Rose looked stricken. “He’ll be back,” she said.
The three of them stared at each other. Absence could fill a room to overflowing, apparently.
The front door banged opened. Loreda and Ant came back with dirty hands and dirty faces and three small potatoes between them.
“It’s barely any use.” Loreda stopped. “What’s wrong? Who died?” Elsa set down her glass. “I need to talk to you two.”
Rose put a hand over her mouth; Elsa understood. Saying these words aloud would change the children’s lives.
Rose pulled Elsa into a tight hug, then let her go. Elsa turned to face the children.
Their faces unraveled her. Both of them were such spitting images of their father. She went to them, pulled them into her arms, both at once. Ant happily hugged her back. Loreda struggled to break free.
“You’re smothering me,” Loreda complained. Elsa let Loreda go.
“Where’s Daddy?” Ant asked.
Elsa smoothed her son’s hair back from his freckled face. “Come with me.” She led them out onto the porch, where they all sat on the porch swing. Elsa pulled Ant onto her lap to make room.
“What’s wrong now?” Loreda said, sounding put-upon.
Elsa drew a breath, pushed off, let the swing rock backward and forward. Lord, she wished her grandpa were here to say, Be brave, and give her a little push. “Your father has left—”
Loreda looked impatient. “Oh, yeah? Where’d he go?” And there it was. The moment to lie or tell the truth.
He’s taken a job out of town to save us. It would be easy to say, harder to prove when no money or letters came, when month after month, he didn’t come home. But they wouldn’t cry themselves to sleep, either.
Only Elsa would.
“Mom?” Loreda said sharply. “Where did Dad go?” “I don’t know,” Elsa said. “He left us.”
“Wait. What?” Loreda jumped off the swing. “You mean—” “He’s gone, Lolo,” Elsa said. “Apparently he jumped on a train.”
“DON’T YOU CALL ME THAT. Only he can call me that,” Loreda screamed.
Elsa felt fragile enough that she feared there were tears in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“He left you,” Loreda said. “Yes.”
“I HATE YOU!” Loreda ran down the porch steps and disappeared around the corner of the house.
Ant twisted around to look up at Elsa. His confusion was heartbreaking. “When’s he comin’ back?”
“I don’t think he will come back, Ant.” “But … we need him.”
“I know, baby; it hurts.” She stroked his hair back from his face.
Tears filled his eyes and seeing that made her own eyes sting, but she refused to cry in front of Ant.
“I want my daddy. I want my daddy…”
Elsa held her son close and let him cry. “I know, baby. I know…” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
|
LOREDA CLIMBED UP THE windmill and sat on the platform beneath the giant blades, her knees drawn up. The wood was warm beneath her, heated by the sun.
How could Daddy do this? How could he leave his family on the farm without crops or water? How could he leave—
Me.
It hurt so much she couldn’t breathe when she thought of it. “Come back,” she screamed.
The blue, sunlit Great Plains sky swallowed her feeble cry and left her there, alone, feeling small and lonely.
How could he abandon her when he knew how much she wanted to leave this farm? She was like him, not like Mom and Grandma and Grandpa. Loreda didn’t want to be a farmer; she wanted to go out into the
great big world and become a writer and write something important. She wanted to leave Texas.
She felt the windmill rattle and thought, Great, now Mom was going to come up, looking all pathetic, and try to comfort Loreda. Mom was the very last person Loreda wanted to see now.
“Go away,” Loreda said, wiping her eyes. “This is all your fault.”
Mom sighed. She looked pale, almost fragile, but that was ridiculous.
Mom was about as fragile as a yucca root.
Mom continued climbing up to the platform and sat down beside Loreda, in the place her daddy always sat, and it made Loreda suddenly furious. “You don’t belong there,” she said. “It’s where…” Her voice broke.
Mom laid a hand on Loreda’s thigh. “Honey—”
“No. No.” Loreda wrenched free. “I don’t want to hear some lie about how it will be okay. Nothing will ever be okay again. You drove him away.” “I love your father, Loreda.” Mom said it so quietly Loreda could barely hear it. She saw tears brighten her mother’s eyes and thought, I will not
watch you cry.
“He wouldn’t leave me.” The words felt ripped out of Loreda. She climbed down the windmill and ran, blinded by tears, back into the house, where Grandpa and Grandma sat on the settee, holding hands, looking like tornado survivors, stricken.
“Loreda,” Grandma said. “Come back…”
Loreda barged up to her bedroom, and found Ant curled into a little ball on her bed, sucking his thumb.
The sight of him crying finally broke Loreda. She felt her own tears burn, fall.
“He left us?” Ant said. “Really?”
“Not us. Her. He’s probably waiting for us somewhere.” Ant sat up. “Like an adventure?”
“Yes.” Loreda wiped her eyes, thinking, Of course. “Like an adventure.”
|
ELSA REMAINED ON THE platform, staring out, seeing nothing. The thought of climbing down, walking back into the house, into her bedroom—her bed— was more than she could bear. So she stayed there, thinking of all the things
she’d done wrong that had led to this moment and wondering what her life would be like now.
She felt a brush of wind lift her hair. She was so lost in her thicket of pain, she barely noticed.
I should go after Loreda.
But she couldn’t face her daughter’s fury and heartache. Not yet.
She should have told Rafe she’d go west. Everything would be different now if she’d simply said, Sure, Rafe, we’ll go. He would have stayed. They could have convinced Tony and Rose to come with them.
No.
That was a lie she couldn’t tell herself even now. And how could Elsa and Rafe have left them behind? How could they have gone west with no car and no money?
Wind yanked the kerchief off her head.
Elsa saw her kerchief sail out into the air. The platform shook; the blades overhead creaked and spun.
Storm coming.
Elsa climbed down from the shaking platform. As she stepped onto the ground, a gust swept up topsoil and lifted it upward in a great, howling scoop and blew it sideways. Sand hit Elsa’s face like tiny bits of glass.
Rose ran out of the house, yelled to Elsa, “Storm! Coming fast!” Elsa ran to her mother-in-law. “The kids?”
“Inside.”
Holding hands, they ran back to the house, bolting the door shut behind them. Inside, the walls quaked. Dust rained down from the ceiling. A blast of wind struck hard, rattled everything.
Rose jammed more wads of cloth and old newspapers in the windowsills.
“Kids!” Elsa screamed.
Ant came running into the sitting room, looking scared. “Mommy!” He threw himself at her.
Elsa clung to him. “Put on your gas mask,” she said. “I don’t wanna. I can’t breathe with it,” Ant whined.
“Put it on, Anthony. And go sit under the kitchen table. Where’s your sister?”
“Huh?”
“Go get Loreda. Tell her to put on her gas mask.” “Uh. I can’t.”
“Can’t? Why not?”
He looked miserable. “I promised not to tell.”
She lowered herself to her knees to look at him. Dirt rained down on them. “Anthony, where is your sister?”
“She ran away.” “What?”
Ant nodded glumly. “I tol’ her it was a dumb idea.” Elsa rushed to Loreda’s bedroom, shoved the door open. No Loreda.
She saw something white through the falling dust. A note on the dresser.
I’m going to find him.
Elsa rushed downstairs, yelled, “Loreda ran away,” to Rose and Tony. “I’m taking the truck. Is there gas left in the tank?”
“A little,” Tony yelled. “But you can’t go out in this.” “I have to.”
Elsa fished the long-unused keys from the junk bucket in the kitchen and went back out into the blasting, gritty dust storm. She pulled her bandanna up around her mouth and nose and squinted to protect her eyes.
Wind swirled in front of her. Static electricity made her hair stand up. Out where the fence used to be, she saw blue fires flare up from the barbed wire.
Feeling her way in the dust storm, she found the line they’d strung between the house and the barn.
She pulled herself along the rough rope toward the barn, flung the doors open. Wind swept through, breaking slats away, terrifying the horses.
Bruno bolted out of his stall, through a broken slat, and stood in the aisle, nostrils quivering in fear, panicked. He snorted at Elsa and ran out into the storm.
Elsa pulled the cover off the truck; the wind yanked the canvas from her grasp and sent it flying like an open sail into the hayloft. Milo whinnied in terror from his stall.
Elsa climbed into the driver’s seat and stabbed the key into the ignition, turned hard. The engine coughed reluctantly to life. Please let there be
enough gas to find her.
She drove out of the barn and into the storm, her hands tight on the wheel as the wind tried to push her into the ditch. A chain tied to the axle rattled along behind her, grounding the truck so the vehicle wouldn’t short out.
In front of her, brown dirt blew sideways, her two headlights spearing into the gloom. At the end of the driveway, she thought: Which way?
Town.
Loreda would never turn the other way. There was nothing for miles between here and the Oklahoma border.
Elsa muscled the truck into a turn. The wind was behind her now, pushing her forward. She leaned forward, trying to see. She couldn’t drive more than ten miles an hour.
In town, they’d turned the streetlamps on in the storm. Windows had been boarded up and doors battened down. Dust and sand and dirt and tumbleweeds blew down the street.
Elsa saw Loreda at the train depot, huddled against the closed door, hanging on to a suitcase the storm was trying to yank out of her hand.
Elsa parked the truck and got out. Thin halos of golden light glowed at the streetlamps, pinpricks in the brown murk.
“Loreda!” she screamed, her voice thin and scratchy in the maw. “Mom!”
Elsa leaned into the storm; it ripped her dress and scraped her cheeks and blinded her. She staggered up the depot steps and pulled Loreda into her arms, holding her so tightly that for a second there was no storm, no wind clawing or sand biting, just them.
Thank you, God.
“We need to get into the depot,” she said. “The door’s locked.”
A window exploded beside them. Elsa let go of Loreda and clawed her way to the broken window, climbed over the glass teeth in the sill, felt sharp points jab her skin.
Once inside, she unlocked the front door and pulled Loreda inside and slammed the door shut.
The depot rattled around them; another window cracked. Elsa went to the water fountain and scooped up some lukewarm water and carried it back
to Loreda, who drank greedily.
Elsa slumped down beside her daughter. Her eyes stung so badly she could hardly see.
“I’m sorry, Loreda.”
“He wanted to go west, didn’t he?” Loreda said.
The walls of the depot clattered and shook; the world felt as if it were falling apart.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you just say yes?”
Elsa sighed. “Your brother has no shoes. There’s no money for gas. There’s no money for anything. Your grandparents won’t leave. All I saw were reasons not to go.”
“I got here, and I didn’t know where to go. He didn’t want me to know.” “I know.”
Elsa touched her daughter’s back.
Loreda yanked sideways and scuttled away from the touch.
Elsa brought her hand back and sat there, knowing there was nothing she could say to fix this breach with her daughter. Rafe had abandoned them both, walked out on his children and his responsibilities, and it was still Elsa whom Loreda blamed.
|
THAT NIGHT, AFTER THE storm quieted, Elsa drove back to the farmhouse with Loreda. Somehow, Elsa found the strength to get herself and the children fed, and finally she tucked them into bed. All without crying in front of anyone. It felt like a major triumph. In the hours after Rafe’s abandonment, Rose’s pain had turned to seething anger that showed itself in outbursts in Italian. Loreda’s despair had left her mute during their evening meal, and Ant’s confusion was painful to see. Tony made eye contact with no one.
It occurred to Elsa as she walked into her bedroom—finally—that she hadn’t spoken in a long time, hadn’t bothered to even respond when spoken to. The pain of him leaving kept expanding inside of her, taking up more and more space.
There was no wind outside now, no forces of nature trying to break down the walls. Only silence. An occasional coyote howl, an every-now-and-then scurrying of some insect across their floor, but nothing else.
Elsa walked to the chest of drawers beneath the window. She opened Rafe’s drawer to look at the only shirt he’d left behind. All she had of him now.
She picked it up, a pale blue chambray with brass snaps. She’d made it for him one Christmas. There was still a small brownish-red mark of her blood on one cuff, where she’d poked herself in the sewing.
She wrapped the shirt around her neck as if it were a scarf and walked aimlessly out into the starlit night, going nowhere. Maybe she would start walking and never stop … or never take this scarf off until one day, when she was old and gray, some child would ask about the crazy woman who wore a shirt for a scarf and she would say she couldn’t recall how it had begun or whose shirt it was.
As she neared the mailbox, she saw Bruno, their gelding, dead, caught in the dried branches of the fallen trees, dirt caked in his open mouth. Tomorrow, they would have to dig into the hard, dry earth to bury him. Another terrible chore, another goodbye.
With a sigh, she walked back to the house, got into bed. The mattress felt too large for her alone, even if she spread her arms and legs wide. She folded her arms over her chest as if she were a corpse being washed and readied for burial, and stared up at the dusty ceiling.
All those years, all those prayers, all her hope that at last, someday, she would be loved, that her husband would turn to her and see her and love what he saw … gone.
Her parents had been right about her all along.
