Lillian’s voice through the glass was muffled somewhat, but Wade heard her words well enough: “Wait there. She’ll be right out.” Then she closed the inner door, and Wade was looking at his reflection. It was Pop he saw looking back, twenty or thirty years ago, haunted and angry, kept outside the family of man, compelled to stand in the rain and cold and darkness alone, while the others sat around a fire inside; and because he was not there with them, they were unafraid and slung their arms over each other’s shoulders and sang songs or whispered sweet secrets to one another, men and women and children full of good intentions and competence, people who were able to love one another cleanly. He, like his father before him, and like that man’s father too, Wade’s and my grandfather and our unknown great-grandfather as well, stood outside, hands buried in pockets, scowling furiously at the frozen ground, while everyone else stayed warm and loved one another.
All those solitary dumb angry men, Wade and Pop and his father and grandfather, had once been boys with intelligent eyes and brightly innocent mouths, unafraid and loving creatures eager to please and be pleased. What had turned them so quickly into the embittered brutes they had become? Were they all beaten by their fathers; was it really that simple?
There is no way of knowing about any of them but Wade. Pop was orphaned when he was ten and sent to live with an elderly aunt and uncle in Nova Scotia, and when he was fourteen he had run away, following the reapers west across Canada, chasing the harvest all the way from the Maritimes to British Columbia. When the crews had returned east, he had come back with them and had crossed down into New Hampshire to work in a paper mill in Berlin, and when he was twenty he married a Lawford girl, because he had got her pregnant. He took a job in the Littleton Coats mill, so she could stay near her family, he said, but also because she had a house, Uncle Elbourne’s house, where they could live. Later, when we were children and Pop now and then spoke of his father, it was as if he were speaking of a distant relative who had died before he was born, and when he spoke of his mother it was as if she were a figure in an almost forgotten dream, an emblematic stand-in for someone who might once have been important to him. So it was as if he had no parents, no past, no childhood, even. His father had not even a name — Pop’s father’s and mother’s graves were in Sydney, Nova Scotia, we were told: they had been killed one winter night when a kerosene stove exploded and their house burned down. That was the whole story.
As for Pop’s grandfather and grandmother, there was nothing: they were as lost in history as if they had lived and died ten thousand years ago. Pop had sisters and brothers, we knew, although we did not know how many, and they, too, had been farmed out with Canadian relatives and friends, but he had never seen them again after the fire, for reasons he never explained. And we never thought to ask, did we? The children of a man like him and a woman whose only life was her secret unspoken life, we thought it was normal to be alone in the world, normal to have sisters and brothers and dead parents and grandparents that one never spoke of. And by the time we were old enough to understand that such a life was not normal at all, we were too angry and hurt to ask. It was unimaginable to us that we ask our father, “Why did you separate yourself forever from your family?”
The door swung open, and Wade looked up: Lillian held back the glass storm door and waved for Jill, who stood in the hall a short ways behind her, to come along. The child’s face was sober, a little sad or possibly frightened, as if she were being sent away to summer camp. Lillian said to Wade, coldly, clipping her words, “Is there snow on the ground up there?”
“Yeah, lots.”
“See,” Lillian said to Jill, and she pointed down at the rubber boots on the child’s feet. “Keep them on whenever you go out.”
“Hi, honey,” Wade said, and he extended one hand toward Jill. She was carrying a small overnight bag and wore mittens and a bright-blue down parka with the hood up.
“Hi,” she said, and she passed Wade her suitcase and walked by him to the sidewalk, where she paused for a second at the rear of the truck, as if looking for his car, then stood beside the door on the passenger’s side, waiting for him.
In a trembling voice, Lillian said to Wade, “Have her back here tomorrow by six. We have something to do at six.”
“No problem. Look, I …,” he began, not sure what he wanted to say, only that he was sorry somehow, for something he could not name. What had he done? Why did he feel so guilty all of a sudden? An hour before, he was angry at her; now he wanted her forgiveness: he could not, for the life of him, connect the two emotions, rage and shame.
“You make me sick,” she spat at him. Though her gaze was flinty, she seemed ready to burst into tears. “I can’t believe you’ve sunk so low,” she told him.
“As what? Low as what? I mean, what the hell have I done, Lillian? It’s bad to want to see Jill? It’s bad to want to see your own daughter?”
“You know what I’m talking about,” she said. She suddenly pasted a smile onto her face and waved at Jill and called, “’Bye, honey! Call me tonight if you want!” Then her face filled with anger again, and her chin crinkled the way it used to when she was about to cry, and she said, “If I could have you killed, Wade Whitehouse, believe me, I would.”
“For … for what? What did I do?”
“You know damned well for what. For what you’ve done to me, and what you’re doing to that child you say you love so much. Love,” she sneered. “You’ve never loved anyone in your life, Wade. Not even yourself. Whatever you once had, you’ve ruined it,” she said, and she yanked the glass door closed, stepped back and slammed the inner door.
Slowly, Wade turned and walked down the path to the truck.
“Are we going in this?” Jill asked.
“Yeah. My car, it’s in the shop. This’ll be fine,” he said.
“It’s okay. It’s pretty old.”
“It belongs to Pop.”
“Pop?”
“Grandpa. My father. It’s his.”
“Oh,” she said, and she opened the door and climbed up onto the seat. Wade slung the suitcase in beside her and closed the door, walked around the front of the truck and got in and started the motor. Reaching in front of Jill, he switched on the heater, and the fan began to chirp loudly.
“You eat lunch yet?” he asked.
“No.” She sat up straight and stared out the windshield.
“How about a Big Mac?” he said, winking.
“Mommy won’t let me eat fast food. You know that,” she said without looking at him. “It’s bad for you.”
“C’mon, we always sneak a Big Mac. And a cherry turnover. Your favorite. C’mon, what do you say?”
“No.”
Wade sighed. “What do you want, then?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing. You can’t have nothing, Jill. We need lunch. Mr. Pizza? Want to stop at Mr. Pizza’s?”
“Same thing, Daddy. No fast food,” she said emphatically. “Mommy says—”
“I know what Mommy says. I’m in charge today, though.”
“Okay. So we’ll get what you want. What do you want?” she said, continuing to look straight ahead.
Wade released the hand brake and pulled away from the curb. At the intersection at the end of the street, he stopped the truck and said, “Nothing, I guess. I guess I can wait till we get home, if you can. Maybe we’ll stop by Wickham’s for a hamburger when we get to Lawford. That suit you? You always like Wickham’s.”
“Okay,” she said.
“Fine.” He turned right and headed north on Pleasant Street, toward the interstate. They remained silent, as the old truck stuttered along the winding road. Then, after a few moments, Wade looked over at Jill and realized that she was crying. “Oh, Jesus, Jill, I’m sorry. What’s the matter, honey?”