A Thousand Acres: A Novel by Jane Smiley

Author:Jane Smiley [Smiley, Jane]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2011-01-04T16:00:00+00:00

24

EVENTUALLY, WE SETTLED ON THE PLAN that until the storm passed, Rose and the girls would stay at our house, Pete would go home and check on things there, and Ty would check at Daddy’s and then wait there if Daddy hadn’t gotten home yet. After the storm, they would look around, and if Daddy hadn’t been found in an hour or so, we would call the sheriff.

Things were awkward between Ty and me. What I looked for him to say was that he didn’t believe anything Daddy had said, didn’t believe the unspoken gist of his denunciation, either—that I was a worthless and unlovable person. He said nothing about this, possibly because to mention it would give it more credence than it was worth. I wanted him to say that when he drove Daddy home from town, he didn’t know what Daddy wanted to say to me, but he said nothing about that, either, and I felt an irresistible temptation to imagine that Daddy was speaking for Ty as well as himself, that they had agreed on these things beforehand. I found his dry socks and his poncho.

Of course I wondered why Daddy had chosen just those terms for me, whore, slut. Of course the conviction that he had some knowledge of my time with Jess Clark materialized, whole and fully armed, in my new awareness. Perhaps that was what he and Ty spoke of on their way home. Perhaps this was where the story of my father flowed into the story of Jess Clark. Certainly a child raised with an understanding of her father’s power like mine could not be surprised that even without any apparent source of information he would know her dearest secret. Hadn’t he always?

I sat in the dark after Ty and Pete left. Rose was upstairs, talking to Linda and Pammy, getting them to go to sleep in spite of everything, since because of everything there was something intolerable about their inquisitive and fearful presence. I was still in shock, or maybe in suspension, waiting for the catalyst. It was easy to see, all of a sudden, that my life until now had been, at least, predictable, well-known. What I had had to do I knew I could do, whether I actually preferred to do it or not.

Rose descended the stairs, carrying the kerosene lamp, which she set on the newel post at the bottom. She called up, “There. You can see a little light. It’s right at the bottom of the stairs like I said.”

There was a faint “okay,” just audible over the sound of the rain. She came and sat down across from me. There was nothing to do, since we had already unplugged the appliances and the television. It was clear that we would have to talk about it. I wondered how she would start.

I wondered, too, what Jess Clark would say to all this. It seemed like nothing could batter that out of me. Impossibilities disguised as possibilities floated out

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