She undressed in the bathroom too. She brushed her hair and washed her face and put on a long nightgown, then came into the bedroom. She said she’d made up the bed in the other room for them. But they asked to sleep in this room with her. Couldn’t they, this once? They were already in the bed. She stood beside the bed looking at them. They wanted to sleep one on each side of her but she said that would be too hot. She got in on the outside and Bobby lay in the middle with Ike next to him. The ceiling light down the hallway shone in through the half-open door. They settled down and lay quietly. Occasionally a car went by outside on Chicago Street. They talked a little in the dim light.
Mother, are you going to be all right in Denver? Ike said.
I hope so, she said. I want to be. I’ll call you when I get there. Will you call me back sometimes?
Yes, he said. We’ll call you every week.
Does Dad have your number? Bobby said.
Yes, he does. And you know how much I love you, don’t you. Both of you. I want you always to remember that. I’m going to miss you so much. But I know you’re going to be all right.
I wish you didn’t have to go, Ike said.
I don’t understand why you are, Bobby said.
It’s hard to explain, she said. I just know I have to. Can you try to accept that, even if you don’t understand it?
They didn’t say anything.
I hope you can.
After a while she said, Do you have any more questions?
They shook their heads.
Do you think you can go to sleep?
In the night after they were asleep she got up and looked out the window at the front yard and the empty street, at the stark trees that stood in the lawn like arrested stickfigures. She went out to the kitchen. She made coffee and took it to the front room and lay down on the sofa and after an hour or more she went to sleep. But she woke early, in time to wake them and set out cereal, and then she drove them in the car back to the house in the early cold winter morning. She leaned across in the front seat of the car and kissed them both, and Guthrie came out on the porch to meet them, and then she turned the car around and went out the drive onto Railroad Street and drove through Holt, which didn’t take long, and then she was in the country on US 34 driving west to start her next life in Denver.
Victoria Roubideaux.
The second time she drove out there she had the girl with her, beside her in the front seat of the car. The girl looked frightened and preoccupied, as if she were going to confession or jail or some other place that was so unpleasant that she was willing to go only under force of circumstance and nothing else. It was Sunday. A cold and bright day and the snow still as brilliant as glass under the sun, with the wind blowing as usual in sudden but regular gusts so that outside when they got beyond the town limits it was the same as before except that the wind had turned west in the night. The cattle, the same shaggy black baldy cattle spread out in the corn stubble as the day before, were still there. It was only as if the cattle had made a collective rightface in the night when the wind had changed and had then gone on slicking up the spilled corn, wrapping their tongues around the dry corn husks, raising their heads and staring off into the distance, all the time chewing steadily.
Maggie Jones had driven more than halfway to the McPherons before the girl said any word at all. Then she said: Mrs. Jones. Would you stop the car?
What is it?
Please, would you pull over?
Maggie slowed and steered the car off onto the rutted shoulder. A bank of snow alongside was packed into the barrow ditch and from behind the car the white smokelike exhaust tore away in the gusting wind.
What is it? Are you sick?
No.
What then?
Mrs. Jones, I don’t know if I can do this.
Oh. Well honey, yes you can.
I don’t know, the girl said.