Galen stopped kicking. He couldn’t believe any of this. She kept twisting things around. He needed to think. He needed to think his way out of this.
Look, he said. Let’s calm down. Let’s think about this. I never hurt you. I’m not an abuser. Can we agree on that, at least?
You’re an abuser.
Galen couldn’t stay here. He was going to just scream if he stayed here. He needed to go away for a while and calm down and think. But he couldn’t have her calling the police while he did that.
There was a bar that fit over the door handle. He swung this in place and then tried to close the padlock. It was rusty and didn’t close easily, but he brought a thigh up to hold the bottom of it and he pushed down with both hands until it locked.
What are you doing?
I closed the padlock. I have to think for a while. I have to figure this out. And I can’t have you calling the police.
She laughed. That’s perfect. You’re hanging yourself.
Are you my mother? he screamed. He screamed so hard his throat hurt, the same as when he vomited, his mouth and throat stretched wide open and burning. Are you my mother?
Chapter 19
Screaming at her like that made him weak. Everything gone inside, a hollow. It wasn’t even anger. It was something far more desperate, the entire world unmoored. He walked toward the house reduced to a shell. There was nothing left at all.
The blanket was somewhere in the house, and he would find it. Not that finding it would make much difference.
Her room a child’s room still. Wooden toys from Germany on the shelves, wagons and nutcrackers and small wooden girls. A full-size rocking horse also out of wood. Everything placed carefully, the most special of her childhood remembrances.
He didn’t really understand who his mother was. He hadn’t been there when she was made, or lived any of the years when she was remade. He didn’t have anywhere to start from. And what she was doing now was unimaginable. The way they were talking to each other was unimaginable.
What happened? he asked aloud.
He found her small suitcase in the closet, but it was empty, already unpacked from the trip. He pushed dresses and coats aside, found paper bags of sweaters and socks. No sign of the blanket.
Her bed small, with a light blue cover. He knelt down, looked under the bed, and there it was. An old brown blanket from the cabin, and somewhere on it the signs of his crime.
Galen lay down on the wood floor and put the blanket under his head, a pillow. He just lay there because he didn’t know what to do. He needed to undo things, to make them not have happened. Where had he and his mother first gone wrong?
The blanket was rough wool, very old. And this was the problem. Galen and his mother had gone wrong before Galen was even born. That was the truth. And it was outrageously unfair that he should be blamed now.
This is not me, he said. This is not even about me.
He rose and took the blanket into the backyard, dumped it on the lawn. Then he went to the kitchen for matches and returned to burn this blanket and everything it meant. He watched the flame start at one corner, nearly invisible in the sun. Hints of blue and orange. He could feel the warmth as the fire spread, warmer even than this hot sun, and he could see the wool turning black and thinning as it was consumed. The fire known by what it left behind.
The blanket shrank into a ball, knitted itself up tightly and blackened and then returned itself to earth and air, becoming ash and vapor, no more than a gray smudge against the green. This is what Galen needed to do somehow with his life. He needed to find some burning away, some regeneration, some promise to start fresh.
He washed himself in the shower, scrubbing mercilessly at his dick. There’d be no sign left of Jennifer. And no doubt she’d had three showers by now.
Galen took his underwear to the back lawn and burned that, too. Then he walked to the shed, stood before the door with its rusty lock.
I’m thirsty, she said. It’s hot in here. You need to unlock that door and leave. I’ll give you one hour.
I burned all of it.
What’s that?
I burned the blanket. I burned my underwear. I took a shower. And you know Jennifer’s had a shower already. So there’s no evidence left.
It won’t matter. I’m the witness, and that’s what’s important. How often does a mother testify against her own son? They’ll believe me.
Why are you doing this?
Why did you become who you are?
Not like I could help that.
Well it’s the same for this now. It’s not like I have another choice.
You need to talk to me. You can’t just talk like that.
I don’t need to do anything.
This isn’t even about me.
That’s what I was saying. I knew you’d think this wasn’t about you. I knew you’d feel it was just my problem and a betrayal and unfair. But I need you to know this really is about who you are. You’re an animal, and you deserve to spend the rest of your life in prison.
Mom. Galen didn’t know what else to say. I’m not an animal.
You are an animal.
The sun so hot. He walked around the corner to the small toolshed, built off the wall of the main shed. It would be shady in there. He swung open the wooden door and was reminded of his grandfather. The tools rarely used now, but his grandfather had been in here all the time, always working on the orchard or hedge or buildings when he wasn’t at work as an engineer. His entire life had been work. And that should have made him a good man, but he beat his wife, and because of that he would never be a good man. He was an abuser. That’s what the word meant. And everyone in the family screwed up because of it. He was the one who should have been locked away. Galen had done nothing wrong. His mother was blaming him for her father. She was sending her father to prison.
I’m not your father, he said, loud enough for her to hear through the wall.
Where are you?
I’m in the toolshed. And I’m not your father.
Why are you in the toolshed?
It’s shady in here. It’s hot, and there’s nowhere to sit, but at least it’s not in the sun.
Well it’s hot in here. You have to unlock the door and leave. I’m tired of waiting. I need to get out of here, and I need something to drink.
You’re trying to send your father to prison. That’s what’s happening.
This is about you.
Galen picked up a shovel and smacked the wall. It was a big shovel, heavy, with a wide flat blade, not rounded.
What are you doing?
He smacked it again, started a rhythm.
Stop that.
I’m going to keep doing this until you admit this is all about your father and not about me.
Stop it right now.
But Galen kept hitting the wood with the shovel, a steady rhythm, getting the face to hit as flat as possible for the loudest smack. Leaning over the smaller tools to get to the wall. Pruners and hedge clippers and small garden shovels, tools accumulated over decades. The shovel heavy very quickly, his shoulders burning and his breath ragged, but he kept going.
She had stopped talking, and that was good.
Galen wished he had used a smaller shovel. He didn’t want to interrupt the rhythm, but finally he just couldn’t hold it up anymore.
Keep going, she said.
He walked out into the sun and just wandered through the orchard, bareheaded and sun-crazed, the heat moving in heavy bands around him. The furrows uneven and clodded, unturned for years now. The irrigation system still working, thin dark tracks along the rows of trunks, evaporating. He took off his shoes and squished into the mud, cooling his feet at least. The shade here still hot, sunlight everywhere through the leaves, no real shade. The walnuts a brutal tree.