Acre Under a Green Sky

Next day, the sky was an impenetrable gray; dismal and harrowing. As the day drew on, the threat of rain turned into an unfulfilled promise. The humidity that Fourth of July was oppressive. Our clothes were stuck on like stamps, and faces gleamed with a kind of greasy sweat. We all dragged ourselves from resting place to resting place breathing in long wearisome sighs. If only it would rain. If only lightning would pierce that dirty cotton sky and detonate an explosion of thunder and rain. Dear God, give us some relief. Make it pour.

Midge sat nursing Bint on the day bed in the den listening to her old seventy-eights on the record player. She was fanning Bint with an old National Geographic to the beat of Judy Garland singing, "I Don't Care". Rick had just stormed out of the room after delivering an exasperating lecture on the futility of fanning oneself on a day like this. He went on and on about it as if it actually mattered while Midge went on and on fanning her half-exposed breast and the sweet face of her infant son.

The day bed was surrounded on three sides by windows looking out onto the woods. Ordinarily, it was a delightful place to sit, but on this day it was a little too much like actually being outside. This cozy little peninsula seeming to jut out into the great outdoors now struck me as drab and ominous. I decided to join the others in the big room.

My grandfather was sitting in his overstuffed easy chair with his feet up on the matching ottoman reading Charles Dickens to Danny who was kneeling by the side of the chair with his elbows draped over the chair arm like a parishioner bent over the pew in front of him.

Marty was sitting on one of the hooked rugs playing a board game with David and Baby Ruth and June, but it was a dumb little kids' game they had brought with them, and I didn't feel like learning it. It looked like June was making a mess of the game anyway; sticking game pieces in her mouth with one hand and waving away the rest with her other hand.

I found Carol and Rick in the kitchen. The evening meal was already bubbling and steaming on the stove. Carol appeared to be washing every dish in the house while Rick was mixing another drink. They were having a serious talk so I left them there in that sauna and returned to the big room.

I lay on the sofa luxuriating in the plump down-filled cushions for precisely two seconds before feeling the heat. I rolled off the sofa onto the carpeted floor and stared up at the cavernous peaked ceiling with its heavy dark beams and delicate web-like trusses in perfect symmetry down the room. A leather band of sleigh bells draped down from one of the beams, and it occurred to me that I had never heard them ring. I wondered if either Marty or Rick could reach them on tiptoe. I doubted it. Hanging kerosene lamps with brass fittings and brilliant glass shades hung from the highest peak on very long chains. I had never seen them lit. I thought how wonderful to be a bat and to have all that to fly around in.

All our plans for that day had been dashed by the weather. We were going to picnic and swim at Sunrise Park until dark when the fireworks display would begin at the town park. All cancelled. All over. And they were all leaving first thing the next morning. This was the worst Fourth of July I had ever known; and yet, I did not shake my fist at God and beat my breast. Perhaps it was just too damned hot. Or perhaps by this time we had all had enough fun. There is a limit.

It was approaching supper time, and still the sky had not opened up to rain down relief. My mother and father arrived looking wrung out and limp. Rick greeted them at the door with blue glasses. There was a half-hearted attempt to rise to the occasion, but absolutely no one had the strength for it. One by one, each of us melted into his own little pool and awaited the inevitable end.

It started with a breeze. We all raised our faces to it and held out our hands to embrace it. In an instant it was as dark as night outside, and the breeze had become a wind gusting through the rafters swaying the kerosene lamps on their long chains. The open page of a newspaper flew up into the rafters and flapped its wings across the ceiling like a demented bird. Someone slammed the heavy front door, and the paper wafted down like a feather. Then there was a clap of thunder so loud we all grabbed our ears. It sounded exactly like someone had dropped a huge, hollow barrel onto the roof from a very great height. You could feel its resonance in the floor boards under your feet. And then, as if to recompense us for having missed the fireworks display, the sky turned an electric white illuminating everything for a good ten seconds as if it were brightest day. The trees outside seemed startled to be exposed so abruptly. Their branches thrashed high and low as if to cover some private parts; and then just as quickly, they were plunged into darkness again.

Inside, everyone was closing casement windows against the wind; wrestling one side against the other to get proper alignment so the latch could be fixed. Doors slammed shut on their own, and the wind down the fireplace whistled an eerie bagpipe drone. There were squeals and bursts of laughter. Midge was standing in the middle of the room reaching up hand over hand for a piece of sheet music from the piano bobbing just out of reach as if on an invisible string. She finally gave up and fell to the floor giggling. When the sheet music landed on her face, we were all doubled over with laughter and falling to our knees.

Then the wind stopped and we all came to attention. It was not simply that we had successfully shuttered ourselves in. The wind stopped; inside and out. We were all breathless for a moment wondering what to expect next. The silence was as exhilarating as our anticipation. And there it was; so gentle at first like squirrels running across the roof, then syncopated like a million toy drumsticks in a flourish of drum rolls. Rain.

Lightning flashed, and thunder roared, and the rain poured down. It was a wonderful shower. Not the least bit threatening. The roof outside with its weathered and bowed shakes resounded with the rain, and we were all lulled by it and rejuvenated at the same time.

The subject of murder came up for the first time over dinner that night. My father was telling everyone about our following Joe Scarceletti into Lincoln. Marty was fascinated.

"You mean, he may be making the same trip tonight? And we're all just sitting here?" Marty asked.

"Don't be a fool!" my grandfather said; speaking up for the first time, "One at this table is enough."

"This is our last night here," Carol said.

"Exactly!" Marty said, then directly to my father, "So what are you going to do next time?"

"Will gave me a reflector thing to put on the back of Joe's car. A third eye, he called it. Yellow."

"Great! You know what I'd do? I'd start from the point where you lost him under that overpass."

"I intend to," my father said, "but first, we have to attach that yellow thing to Joe's . . . "

". . . mud colored Mercury," Midge said; perhaps too wistfully.

"Damn fools!" my grandfather said; trying to end the subject.

We were all sitting around the large oval dining table that expands to seat twenty. My grandfather always said that that table had more leaves than an oak tree. But this night, it was just the thirteen of us –– just family.

Carol had prepared one of her special meatless meals. She had been a hospital dietitian before beginning a family and had strong but unorthodox views on dining. Allowing her this one meal all week-end was an indulgence we all groaned through. As it turned out; of course, she was decades ahead of her time. Today, you would pay handsomely for this very same meal in fashionable restaurants throughout the country. But back then, we all found it barely edible.

My mother tactlessly refused to eat any of it. When a platter of white rice was passed her way, she said, "No, thank you. I don't eat short food," and everyone laughed. She and Rick were like a couple of mischievous kids giggling over their robin's-egg blue glasses. She had already filled one of the small silver-edged dinner ashtrays; and rather than start on a new one, she excused herself and brought a large heavy bowl-like ashtray from the living room and plopped it down between her and Rick. I sat across from her and watched the delicacy with which those slender fingers with the blood-red nails handled the stem of her robin's-egg blue glass and the way she toyed with her cigarette with incessant tapping into the ashtray. She drank and smoked ceremoniously like an oriental woman preparing tea or pitting a mango. It was hypnotic. But her full, red lips were set in a familiar pout of annoyance and petulance. Her tongue was barbed, and her nails were sharp.

I sat there frightened by the change in everyone around that table. As soon as the topic of murder came up, the dynamic changed. We were no longer one. I was too young to wonder why. More than anything in the world, I wanted it back the way it was with good-natured ribbing and genuine laughter. Any undercurrent of dissension in a family is a slash to the throat of a child.

Certain things were clear. Sides had been taken. I now realize that the battle lines drawn that day were ancient; having nothing to do with a murder case. My father was the center of attention; a position he obviously detested. My grandfather was in the opposing corner. Midge and Marty valiantly supported my father. Carol tended toward my grandfather.

Rick withdrew from any confrontation at all in a bizarre way; by not withdrawing at all. Instead, he pushed himself forward like a jovial game show host who dislikes the game only slightly more than the contestants. He would try to joke away any unpleasantness; poking sobriety in the ribs with his elbow until it was black and blue. He thought he had found a comrade in my mother. Only she appeared to get the joke, and the two of them made fun of the process of choosing sides over an issue no one gave a damn about anyway.

But he was wrong about my mother. She was making a diligent effort to appear neutral: but her asides, almost under her breath, revealed a deep and lacerating hostility toward my father. Her attempts to stifle her rage only served to highlight it. At one point; apropos of nothing, she rose to her feet and held out her glass in a toast to my father, "Charlie Chan and the bread man!" Everyone looked to her mutely for some explanation. She only waved them away as if they were too dumb to understand and held out her glass to Rick for a refill. Rick burst out laughing as if he got the joke; but of course, he didn't. My father was white and trembling. My grandfather glared at the two miscreants at the other end of the table and looked to Midge as if it were somehow her responsibility to control her husband and sister-in-law.

My mother and Rick were a party of two to the exclusion of everyone else. There was a dreadful suspense to their playfulness. Would it turn seductive? Sexual? It never did, but the prospect was terrifying.

Marty was not so much ignoring Carol's daggers from across the table as he was oblivious to them. He was genuinely interested in every aspect of the case, and continued his interrogation of my father; prolonging a topic of conversation that everyone, including my father, wanted lying dead on the table with a wooden stake through its heart. Marty was not insensitive to what was going on around him. He simply didn't care. This murder thing was really good stuff and, by God, he wanted to understand it. He was fearless. His own background had not prepared him for subliminal family warfare. He could not see the fuse burning under that fine oak table.

Carol enlisted Midge's help with a wide-eyed nod, and the two of them cleared the table in a flash, but they could not wrestle those blue glasses away from my mother and Rick. Rick pulled the pitcher of martinis close to his chest like a teddy bear, and rose from the table along with the others. My mother lost her balance rising from her chair, and did a quick two step reaching for Baby Ruth's highchair for support. The highchair with Baby Ruth in it teetered on two legs an instant before my mother set it straight. She and Rick laughed it off, and together they walked arm-in-arm into the big room. I lifted Baby Ruth out of her highchair, and at the same time glanced up to meet my father's eyes. He had not moved from his place at the table. I could not read what was in those eyes, but it was excruciating to see.

Baby Ruth ran ahead of me into the big room, and I did not look back to see if my father was coming. My grandfather was already in his chair pretending to read a newspaper. Danny knelt by his side, and my grandfather shooed him away. My grandfather was fuming.

Rick was playing the piano with Midge sitting on the stool next to him. My mother stood leaning up against the piano. They were singing, "Yankee Doodle Dandy". Carol and Marty joined in from across the room on the sofa. All to the accompaniment of rain.

Baby Ruth tugged at my mother's skirt and the two of them began dancing hand in hand around in circles across the floor. It was a delightful moment full of smiles and approval. And then my mother whirled dizzily into the coffee table and fell over it pulling Baby Ruth with her. The two end legs of the table gave way, and the table crashed to the floor with my mother on it. Coffee cups and saucers, along with ashtrays and a vase of flowers slid down the table top and broke onto my mother. There were cries of surprise, and Rick laughed. Everyone was on their feet.

In the midst of all the confusion, my father said, "All right, that's it!" Apparently, he had just entered the room when it happened. He grabbed my mother's arm roughly and tried to pull her to her feet. Her startled laughter turned into rage in that instant and she slapped his hand off her.

"Get your hands off me!" she shrieked.

He grabbed her wrist and dragged her even more roughly off the broken table. Marty and Rick pulled my father aside while Midge helped my mother to her feet. My mother's dress was wet and her hair was mussed. Carol gathered Baby Ruth and the other small children into the corner where she seemed to spread a wing over them like a hen.

"What the hell was that supposed to be?!" my mother shouted at my father, "Help? Were you helping me?"

"You're making a fool of yourself!"

"I had a little accident. We were having fun, weren't we, sweetie?"

Baby Ruth recoiled behind Carol, and my mother was crestfallen. She looked from face to face about the room.

"What?! Do you think he's such big stuff? Your big brother here?! We can't even pay the bread man."

Then her face contorted in pain, and she made a supreme effort to fight it, but it was no use. She was crying, and trying desperately not to. Her face was like a horrible broken thing she couldn't fix. But if she could stoke up enough anger, the pain might go away.

"You stay home and tell the bread man there's no money." Then, turning on my grandfather, she said, "There's no money! Why don't you give your son some money, you fat, ugly slob? There's no money for bread, for Christ's sake, and I'm the one left at home to face the music." Then back to my father, "You're off playing Charlie Chan, while I have to deal with that creep in a bread truck. Oh, he's got a way I can pay him, all right! You think he doesn't let me know how he wants paid?! Well, I wouldn't whore for a part in a movie so I'm sure as hell not going to whore for a loaf of bread! Not for you or your fat father over there or anyone!"

It happened like a clap of thunder –– like a flash of lightning. My father was hitting my mother. It was a tornado of blows knocking her to the floor with him on her. He was punching her with his fist; repeatedly and quickly. Her screams echo through my brain to this day. The men couldn't pull him off her. I felt a hand on my shoulder. Carol was herding us out of the room. The last thing I remember seeing was Midge pounding her fists against my father's back.

We all sat with Carol in one of the bedrooms listening to the cries and shouts and screams for what seemed an eternity. And then there was talk, and Carol left us alone. The talk gave way to whispers and grave silences. I fell asleep listening to the rain and feeling that the world had come to an end.

The next morning, I awoke next to Danny who had wet the bed. We were in one of two single beds, still dressed from the night before. The other bed was mussed, but empty. I lay on my stomach feeling the cold wet of urine and staring at the caned panel in the headboard. The perfection of its pattern mesmerized me; the delicate symmetry of row upon row of eyelets and cross-weaves. I wanted that perfection in my life.

Danny was still asleep. I heard familiar voices beyond the closed door. I don't know why I felt I had to stay there until I was summoned, except that grown-ups control your every move in a disaster. And hadn't it been a disaster? Would anything ever be the same? I would have to give up my free will, until some sense of normalcy returned. I would wait to be told what to do next.

But no one came, and there was no sense of urgency in the voices I heard coming from throughout the house. In fact, everything sounded perfectly normal. But dare I step out into the wreckage of last night? What would I find? I was afraid, but this terror had a stoicism about it I had never known before. It was a frozen benumbing fear that tensed my muscles and clouded my head. The worst had already happened. I had only to assess the damage and to confront an unfamiliar and inhospitable new day.

I stepped out the door and down the hall into the big room. I could hear Carol and Marty in the kitchen. I might have joined them had I not been jolted by an impossible sight. The coffee table my mother had broken the night before was whole again. It must be a trick. I touched it; half expecting it to fall to the floor, but it was as solid as ever with a stack of magazines on top and ashtrays and a vase of fleshly cut flowers from the garden. In fact, everything in that room looked as if the previous night had never happened.

They thought they had fixed everything, but they could not. The night before could not be swept away with a whisk broom and a dust pan. They could not put a new face on it. And this attempt to cover up had the look of an overly made-up dowager. It was insulting and infuriating. Children are not fools. I knew that something had been irretrievably broken.

Carol stepped out of the kitchen with a floral arrangement for the big table and appeared both startled and pleased to see me standing there in the big room.

"Hey, sleepy head! What do you want for breakfast?"

"Pork chops," I said.

The smile drained out of her. She put the bowl of flowers on the table and approached me. She took both my wrists in her hands and pulled me over to my grandfather's chair. She sat with me standing in front of her. Then she grabbed a fistful of my shirt.

"What's this?"

"Danny wet the bed."

"Well, let's get these off," she said; beginning to unbutton my shirt, "I'll wash them. Underwear, too."

I was standing naked in front of her when she called out to Marty who appeared from the kitchen.

"Get me one of your tee shirts and some underpants, okay; until I get these things clean," Carol told him.

Marty stood looking at me over Carol's shoulder, and said, "You okay?"

I nodded toward the coffee table, and said, "Did you do that?"

"It was easy. No big deal."

"Would you get a move on!" Carol said, "This boy's naked here."

Marty went off toward the bedrooms just as Midge was coming in.

"Look at that beautiful butt!" she said, "I love a man with a good butt."

Midge touched my backside, and I slapped her hand away.

"Everything's going to be all right," Carol said, "Don't give it another thought. Your mother is going to spend a few days in Lincoln. Your Dad's working at the office now, but he'll pick you guys up later today. Everything's going to be fine."

Marty was there with the clothes.

"Josh is a criminal, you know?" Midge said.

I looked up into Midge's face. She wasn't kidding.

"Will you shut up, Midge. You don't know what you're talking about."

Carol was pulling Marty's white tee shirt over my head. It came down to my knees. She threw the underpants back at him saying they'd never fit.

She took both my shoulders in her hands, and said, "Everything's going to be all right."

They all packed up their tents and things and left the farm before noon that day. My grandfather never said a word, but somehow communicated that he knew what I was feeling.

My father took us directly from the farm to the home of the Sisters McConnell where we were to stay until my mother's return from exile.

A few days later, my father picked us up and took us to see my mother in a hotel room in Lincoln. She looked fine to me. They spent a lot of time in the bathroom. Talking, they said. I think they were making love.

A few days after that, my father brought her home to an empty house. We were to spend one more night with the Sisters McConnell, allowing my parents a honeymoon night in their own bed. That suited me just fine. I would have been happy to stay forever.