table.
“I’m sorry about yelling,” Elizabeth said. “And being on the phone.”
Mom nodded.
“I don’t mean to be so . . . mean,” Elizabeth continued.
Mom went into the study. She returned and handed Elizabeth a piece of paper. Elizabeth read it. It was Mom’s handwriting.
Ride On! Rough-shod if need be, smooth-shod if that will do, but ride on! Ride on over all obstacles, and win the race!
—Charles Dickens
“That reminds me of you,” Mom said. “You’re a strong woman. And it’s wonderful.”
Mom had never called Elizabeth a woman before.
“But strength can hurt people,” Mom added.
Elizabeth nodded.
They said goodnight, and Elizabeth went back upstairs. Susan was reading in her bed. Elizabeth washed her face, brushed her teeth, and took out her contacts. She sat down at her desk and copied the quotation into her journal. She wrote about the night. She finished, put her journal away.
“Do you want to read in bed for a little while longer?” Elizabeth said. “’Cause I do.”
“Okay,” Susan said.
“It’s sorta early, but I want to get in bed, you know? And just read.”
After the Cub Scouts’ bewildering passage through the night, the lights inside Craig’s house were startling and revealed a great deal more mud on us than we would have guessed. We’d brought extra clothes, of course, so we dumped our boots in the garage and were soon wearing clean, dry clothes.
After hot chocolate and snacks, my dad left, and Craig’s dad and stepmother made themselves scarce, and his sister hid in her room—wisely—which left the house to the seven boys.
We created a sprawling sleeping-bag bivouac in the living room, and we watched a TV show, and played some video games, and then we challenged ourselves, as a group, to stay up later than we ever had—possibly even until dawn—and therefore draw forth all the rich marrow that the night had to offer. There was a hearty mood in the air, and we played a spontaneous game of hide-and-seek in which we were split into three teams. The game didn’t work, but the confusion of it was fun, and during the fray we got interested in the basement, but a surprising late-night appearance by Craig’s dad gently ended that excursion, and before long, one of us was asleep, then two were. So the grand alliance was failing, and one by one the Cub Scouts succumbed to sleep.
Then we were three: Craig, Jason, and me. We had plenty of things to say about the weak members of our group who were already asleep. We had plenty to discuss about the girls in our class. But in the middle of the conversation, we realized that Jason was no longer with us, so it was just me and Craig—the two survivors—and we engaged in cordial games of baseball on our handheld electronic game, whose red pinprick-sized LEDs signified fast balls and curve balls, base hits and home runs, strikes and fouls. Craig had been my ally since third grade—when we both discovered girls before the other boys had—and it was satisfying to know that we were the strongest of the bunch. We proved our staying power, and checked the clock at one point to discover that it was after two a.m., which was a respectable achievement, and we knew that we could stay up at least until four if we wanted to, and probably later. And on the one hand we wanted to, but on the other hand, we argued, what was the point? We knew we could do it, and we had proven our superiority, so who really cared? But we played awhile longer, because we could and because it was enjoyable. Then we decided: let’s get some shut-eye. When this game is done. Ha. Double play. Inning’s over. My turn. Must be after three o’clock by now. Gotta be. Don’t even have to check the clock, because I know.
Grandma finally put on her glasses and looked at the clock on the dresser. 3:40. Well, I’ll swan. Didn’t that just beat all? She wondered if she’d slept at all. She had lain there, trying to put the pain away—put it elsewhere—but it hadn’t worked, and now after looking at the clock, she heard the sounds of a light rain—that drip-drip in the gutters—and she decided to just get up.
So she sat with the heating pad on her neck, and she didn’t even try to read or sleep. The doctor had put her on her fourth medicine for nervitis this week, and he’d said that if it didn’t work there was another one to try, so she fully expected to be on her fifth medicine soon. On top of that, her stomach was still bothering her, and eating bran cereal every morning was like choking on a bale of hay. Didn’t seem to improve matters either.
Grandpa had been helpful. He did all the driving now. He did the dishwashing. He couldn’t be taught to cook, though. They’d lived well on leftovers recently, but those were dwindling.
The newest thing—and she didn’t like to think about it—was that sometimes she couldn’t turn her head. That’s how much it hurt.
At about five o’clock, she went into the kitchen and laid out three Christmas cards to write. Just three. It hurt, but she did it—wrote them, addressed the envelopes—and when she was done she went back into the living room to wait for dawn.
Elizabeth actually woke up before her alarm and found that she was thinking about colleges. It was still pitch black outside, so she figured it was very early, but she checked her clock and saw it was only fifteen minutes before her alarm was set to go off. She rolled onto her back and looked at the ceiling. Susan was still asleep on the lower part of the trundle bed, a spray of dark hair across her cheek.
She ate breakfast. Mom came out of the study in her nightgown. Mom yawned.
“Did they catch a raccoon?” Elizabeth asked.
“No.”
“Poor guys. But good for the raccoons.”
As Elizabeth drove the truck to Columbia, daylight did come, but it was an even gloomier daylight than yesterday’s—rain soaked, dull. She thought about Wayne, and being grounded. She thought about basketball. The Jamestown Tournament started Monday, and she wondered whether the team would actually play like a team instead of a loose affiliation of athletes occasionally interested in a common goal. Last year they’d had better ball handling.
The SAT took three hours. When she got back to the truck, the windshield was icy, but the roads—all the way home—were just wet.
After noon, Grandpa went to Warrensburg by himself. The weather didn’t improve, but it didn’t get worse, and when he got to the Christmas tree lot, there wasn’t much of a selection. Was December 3 late for picking out a tree? He didn’t like choosing one without Grandma. And the prices were higher this year. The one he got was a bit smaller than usual. Too broad and too short.
By the time he got home—about three—it was already starting to get dark.
Or: darker.
Stop
We brought the horses’ tack into the house in the middle of that December, for winter storage, tucked it all into the study, and if you had been outside for a while and came back into the house, you would smell oiled leather—the English and western saddles, the bridles, the long loops of reins.
Our
