“Well, sure you do,” his mother said. “Sure you do, when all you’ve got to judge it by is Sandhill College. Might as well not have gone at all, as far as I’m concerned—”
“No fault of his,” Gram said.
“Well, it’s no fault of miner
“If my son’d had his say,” Gram said, “Ben Joe’d have gone to Harvard, that’s where.”
“Your son could’ve had his say. If he’d come back he could’ve had his say and welcome to it, but what’d he do instead?” She was sitting up straight now, with one hand clasping her fork so tightly that the knuckles were white.
“Who made him like that?” Gram shouted. “Who made his house so cold he chose to go live in another’s, tell me that!”
Ben Joe cleared his throat. “Actually,” he said, “if I’d made better grades I’d have gotten a scholarship to Harvard. I don’t see how it’s anyone’s fault but my—”
“And who didn’t give a hoot when he left?” Gram shouted triumphantly above Ben Joe. “Answer me that, now, answer me—”
“That will do, Gram,” said Ellen Hawkes.
She unclasped her hand from the fork and rose, suddenly calm. “I’ll be home by six,” she said to Joanne and Ben Joe. They nodded, silently; she pushed her chair in and left. Joanne was staring at the tablecloth as if it were impossible to drag her eyes away from it.
“Cracker,” Carol said.
Ben Joe handed her one. She seized it and immediately began crumbling it over her tray.
“I am sorry,” Gram said after a minute. “There was no call to act like that. I didn’t mean to bring it up.”
Joanne nodded, still staring at the tablecloth. “I thought you’d have settled that,” she said.
“Oh, no. No, just let it slip from being uppermost in my mind, is all. You missed the worst of it. Things went on like before even after you up and left home over it, though you’d think some people might try and change a little. Ah, well, least said soonest …”
She sighed and rose to take the stack of dishes to the sink. “Ben Joe, honey,” she called over her shoulder, “you reckon Jamie Dower might like a visitor?”
“I don’t know why not, Gram.”
“You and me’ll go, then, sometime this week. I’ll start thinking about it.”
Joanne rose to help Gram, with her face still pale and too sober. For a while Ben Joe watched them, following their quick, sure movements around the kitchen, but then Carol began blowing cracker crumbs at him and he turned back to her and lifted her out of the high chair.
“Does she get a nap?” he asked Joanne.
“Well, yes. But I’m reading this book that says the same person has got to put her to bed all the time. You better wait and let me do it.”
“All right.” He headed for the living room, with Carol snuggled in the crook of his arm. “Wouldn’t want to make you maladjusted,” he told her. She smiled and sucked on a corner of her cracker.
In the living room he sat down in the rocking chair. He pried the soggy mass of cracker from Carol’s hand and put it in the ash tray, and then he began absent-mindedly rocking. Carol’s head dropped heavily against his chest; her red hair was tickling a point just under his chin. He could feel the small dead weight of her, but he remained unconvinced of her realness and for a long time he just rocked silently, frowning above her head at the faded wallpaper.
5
By evening Ben Joe was beginning to feel the weight of home settling back on him, making him feel heavy and old and tired. He had eaten too much for supper; his stomach ached and he didn’t want to admit it to anyone, or to show it by lying down, for fear that his mother and his grandmother would be hurt after all that special cooking. So he wandered aimlessly through the house, searching out something to do or think about. In the den Tessie and Jenny watched television, scowling intently at the screen and not looking up when he came to stand in the doorway. The twins, dressed in different colors now that they were older but still looking exactly the same in every other way, were popping popcorn with their dates in the kitchen, and Susannah and Gram were playing honeymoon bridge. None of them took any notice of him. He went upstairs, hoping to find someone up there who would talk to him, but his mother was using the sewing machine, her mouth full of pins and her eyes narrowed at the sleeve of a dress for Tessie. Joanne was giving Carol a bath. He could hear them even with the door half shut — Carol squealing and splashing, Joanne calming her with low, soothing noises and then occasionally laughing along with her.
“Can I come in?” Ben Joe called.
“Carol, you mind if a man comes to watch your bath?”
Carol made a louder splash, probably with the flat of her hand, and giggled.
“Well, she didn’t say no,” said Joanne.
Ben Joe pushed the door open and stepped inside. The room was warm and steamy, and cluttered with towels and cast-off clothes. Beside the bathtub knelt Joanne, wearing a terry-cloth bathrobe, with her hair hanging wet and stringy down her neck and her face shiny from her own bath. She had rolled the sleeves of the robe up to her elbows so that she could bathe Carol, who sat in a heap of rubber toys that blocked out almost all sight of bathwater and laughed at Ben Joe.
“Can’t be a true Hawkes,” said Ben Joe. “No bubble bath.”
“Oh, that’ll start soon enough.”
Ben Joe leaned back against the sink with one foot on a tiny old step stool that read: “For doing some job that’s bigger than me.” He tested his full weight on the edge of the sink, decided not to risk it, and stood up again.
“I meant to tell you,” Joanne said. “Don’t feel bad.”
“What?”
“Don’t you feel bad about what Gram said. About your mind being a mish-mash. It’s been in the back of my mind all day to tell you, she didn’t meant it. She just said it for the sake of argument.”
“I don’t feel bad.”
“Okay.”
She started soaping Carol’s hair, expertly, turning the pinkish-red hair dark auburn with her quick, firm fingers. For the first time he noticed that she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. What had she done with it? He pictured her throwing it in Gary’s face, but it sounded improbable. Even in her ficklest days, Joanne had never done things that way. No, it would be more like her not even to tell Gary she was going. Or maybe it had been Gary who had left her, who knew?
“Where’s your wedding ring?” he asked.
“In my jewelry box.”
“What on earth for?”
“Well, I don’t know. I thought maybe I should wear it so I wouldn’t look like an unwed mother, but when I got here Mama said there was no point. She never wears hers, she said. It would just keep reminding her.”
She took Carol by the chin and the back of the neck and ducked her back into the water swiftly. Before Carol could utter more than one sharp squeak she was upright again, with her hair rinsed and streaming.
“Mom’s advice is the last I would take,” Ben Joe said.
“Now, don’t go being mean.”
“I’m not. She wants you to say, ‘Oh, who cares about him?’ and then your whole problem is solved. You saw what that did for her.”
“Mom’s not as coldhearted as Gram keeps telling you, Ben Joe. You know that.”