Just inside the door at home my father was good enough not to turn on the hall light but nonetheless I at once remembered my part. I tossed the keys on the floor in the hall, Fine, there they are, what you wanted. And then I ran up to my room and I locked myself inside.
It wasn’t until I was in my bed that I began not merely to tremble but to shiver in an uncontrollable way. I wasn’t even all that cold. As usual I wondered if I was losing my mind. The shivering was not, I thought, prompted by William’s unnerving, unique histrionics or my inability to speak to my father on the path. No, my teeth were rattling because of the resemblance that was occurring to me: Gloria. Long ago Gloria had stood in the door frame of the stone cottage, forced by my father to produce Stephen’s passport. Had I become Gloria? Had I become a person going insane? There were moments, I could now see, when it was understandable to completely go off your rocker. The easiest and most reasonable and maybe proper thing to do in the world, to lose hold of yourself. What were my parents doing downstairs but probably trying to figure out how to commit me. They were discussing the fact that I was certifiable. So the question before me: Was I indeed crazy?
Yes or no.
MF Lombard driven mad by a departure?
I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know. Before I could make a determination the Stephen photographs leapt to mind. I hoped they were going to be all right out in the hole for the night. I loved those pictures. I loved them so much I could hardly stand it, but not, it seemed, in an insane way. Loving the pictures simply did not feel like lunacy. Loving the pictures, there was nothing to be done but lie quietly at the mercy of the suffering.
After some time I got out of bed and went into William’s room. My heart sped up, the thin hum in my ears as I approached the threshold. Had the woods been a dream for him, too? Would the correct approach be to laugh, to cry, to do nothing but sit down and lean against his shelf? He was at his desk playing Posse. His fine wispy hair was long enough in the back so that a wind might make it tickle his neck. I loved his neck, which he may or may not wish to know.
“Um,” I said.
“What,” he said.
“Are you going?”
“Early tomorrow morning.” He kept playing his game.
I managed a great summoning of my courage and I said right out, “What are you thinking you will do when you get out of college?”
He turned in his office chair to face me. His eyes were bloodshot, I guess from the crying. He looked older than usual, circles etched under his eyes, the brown of them faded. His face was somewhat drawn. “I don’t know, Frankie.”
“You don’t?”
“No.”
I stared at the floor. How could he have no idea?
“I want,” he began.
“What?”
He moistened his lips. He shut his eyes tightly, he opened them and looked hard at me. “I want to make hay.”
“Hay,” I repeated stupidly.
“I want to make hay,” he said again. “And the rain is coming.”
“The cloud is hanging over our heads?”
“But,” he said, nodding, “the rain doesn’t fall. It doesn’t fall yet.”
“Because we don’t have all the bales in.”
“Because—” He suddenly did a lightning spin in his chair. “It’s going to wait until we’re done.”
“Because Papa is there.”
“Yes,” William said. “Because Papa is there.”
We both looked at the floor. “Oh,” I said.
“Now would you please get out of here?” He abruptly turned back to his game.
“Okay,” I said. I went out into the hall. I was satisfied with his answer.
Maybe it was the best possible answer for the time being. I stood at the top of the stairs, very still, holding as still as I could. William, I knew, was capable of playing Posse until morning. It was well past the dinner hour but I could hear my parents at the table in the kitchen. I could see the light downstairs. By the smell of it they were having my mother’s famous pork-and-turnip stew and probably she’d whipped up mashed potatoes with buttermilk. Librarian by day, chef by night. I heard her laugh. “Jim, Jimmy, my God.” My father had been working all day out in the cold and afterward he’d had to go into the woods to find me. Probably he was holding a cup of tea in his enormous knuckly hands, telling her the story of the search. It occurred to me that I, too, could stay right where I was, holding on to the newel post, until morning. “How did it get so late?” I heard my father say. My mother replied as if it was a real question. “In the usual way,” she said. I thought I might stay on the top step, in the darkness, holding to the post, stay awhile longer, but I also knew that in just a minute I’d go downstairs.
Acknowledgments
Thank you to Libby Ester, Mrs. V, Elizabeth Weinstein, and the Wonder Women. My gratitude, also, to the Hedgebrook Foundation. Not least, thank you to Deb Futter and Amanda Urban.
Reading Group Guide
for
The Excellent Lombards
by
Jane Hamilton
Discussion Questions