Comings and Goings
In a fertile corner of Michigan, perched just above the state line in the soft crook of the St. Gerard River, lies the village of River Bend. The highway bypasses town to the west, in a curve mirroring the eastern sweep of the river. The town's romantics describe this pattern as a heart, including Mrs. Tabitha Schwartz, who teaches a section on River Bend in her seventh grade history class. When she puts the town map on the screen, some of the boys in her class invariably snicker and exchange knowing looks: It is commonly agreed upon among teenagers that, when viewed together, the town, its river, and the highway resemble a vulva and the labial folds surrounding it.
The bluffs to the north of town shelter that tender spot where teenagers go when they wish to be alone with each other. This pleasure center goes unnamed-River Bend has no "Make Out Point" as such-because nobody talks about the bluffs. Yet many teens know instinctively, like salmon intuit their own spawning ground, and every spring and all summer long the teenagers trickle in, two by two in their cars, assuming this place is theirs alone. They are shocked, always, when they arrive to find another car parked there, another couple. Or when they're already at the bluffs, screened by a steamy windshield, and hear another vehicle approach. The girls might perk up, listen, try to determine its trajectory. They have a knack for buttoning up just before another car arrives.
In many families, multiple generations share a direct link to this location, for without the cover of the bluffs, and the covert fumblings they enable, the lineage would not have endured.
Sitting anywhere in their houses, the women of River Bend can feel a car running in their driveways, so preternaturally attuned are they to the comings and goings of family, friends, solicitors, neighbors. They feel these arrivals as vibrations in their chests, a skill they developed not for gossip's sake-or, at least, not solely. Instead, they are primed by an old evolutionary need. Women, especially those of limited means, must learn to read the signs. A lingering rumble of a familiar engine in the driveway at day's end means her husband is home, that he is held up in his car collecting something, perhaps his temper, before entering the house. An unfamiliar vibration at an unusual hour means a surprise visit-from an ex maybe, or a long-lost relative, a salesperson or the repo man.
In her two-bedroom house, which squats in the V of land between Main Street and Schoolhouse Road, Deborah Brody hears an engine idle in the driveway. It's the first Saturday in June, and her girls-Kelli, Mandy, and Hannah-are with their grandmother. Her husband, Steve, is working. Deborah peeks through a chink in the blinds to see a car she does not know, an old beat-up Buick. She has to squint to identify the driver, Gilmer Thurber, a man who has lived in town his whole life. She isn't sure what he's doing here. She lives next to the pet store, so she suspects he's headed there, though the longer she watches him, the longer he sits, his car facing the grade school across the street. How sad he must be. He never married. He lives with his sister in a house he inherited from his parents. Deborah has seen him before, watching the children playing, and the longing she sees in his face makes her body go cold. She tries to think what her life would be like if she'd never had kids. She used to dream of moving to a city, of having a job where she could wear high heels and blazers. But here she is, almost forty, living in the same cramped house her husband had when they met. Gilmer looks up and sees her, and his expression is a little sheepish as he puts his car in gear and drives away.
On the outskirts of town, a police car races down the dirt road past Dinah Williams's farm. She hears it approach from her barn, and looks out in time to catch a glimpse. She's pretty sure it was Sheriff Hudson she saw behind the wheel, and wonders where he's going with such urgency. She turns back to her task; today, she's teaching her granddaughters how to milk cows. The youngest girl, Hannah, peeks out of the barn, too late to see the police car. The older sisters, Kelli and Mandy, are too busy brushing the horses and petting their velvet noses. The girls aren't much help to Dinah, but she loves having them at the farm. It's good for them to remember their roots. Moreover, Dinah's daughter, Deborah, needs some time at home without them. As she sets a bucket under her prized cow, Dinah hears an engine in her drive, and she knows her son, Jared, is leaving, heading for the bar. It's only three in the afternoon. Ever since his wife, Paula, left fourteen years ago, Jared has spent most of his free time at the bar.
Back in the heart of River Bend, a car pulls into the drive at the Muylder Mansion, a historic home open to the public from twelve o'clock to three o'clock on Saturdays during the summer, unless its curator, Mrs. Tabitha Schwartz, is sick or out of town with her seniors' club. Mrs. Schwartz-who often feels lonely since her husband died, and who thought her seniors' club would do the trick, and who thought curating this mansion would occupy more of her time in the summer, and who was distraught to find the funding of the mansion was practically nonexistent and that the Muylder Foundation wouldn't open the museum more than three hours a week, not when there is a perfectly good replica of the mansion at the Muylder Museum in Kalamazoo, and who was downright dismayed to learn that her seniors' club consisted only of her and a bunch of old biddies eating deviled ham on white bread-rushes to put on a pot of coffee and open a box of butter cookies. It has been ever so long since the mansion had a visitor. Mrs. Schwartz fluffs her hair and waits, but nobody comes in. When she looks through the window, she's disappointed. It's only one of River Bend's boys in blue, stopped in her parking lot in an unmarked car, talking on his radio. When a beat-up brown Buick drives by, the officer pulls his car out after it. What a waste of a pot of coffee.
Derek Williams sits with a low heart at the kitchen table of his under-furnished modular home, waiting for the sound of his uncle Steve's truck. His kitchen sink, clogged again, is beyond his ability to fix-his ability being limited to emptying bottles of drain cleaner into the pipes. When he hears the engine, his heart sinks further. No doubt his uncle will give him shit for calling about such a simple task. Steve will leave his own tools in the truck with the sole purpose of borrowing Derek's just so he can judge his nephew. Why on earth does Derek have an adjustable wrench instead of a good crescent wrench set? Really, his uncle should shut it, given that Derek works so many hours at the hospital, and doesn't have time for tool shopping, or energy to complete his own home repairs. That's another sore spot with Uncle Steve, who staunchly believes a real man takes care of his own home. How Derek wishes he could call a different handyman. But no doubt if he did, if he not only called but paid another man, it would get back to his uncle and his father, Jared. No, it's easier to steel himself. Stiff upper lip and all. As Derek answers the door and lets his uncle inside, he hears police sirens in the distance.
As his uncle sets to work on the sink, Derek's phone dings: a text from his half sister, Skyla. She has sent the same message to him and her older half sisters, Linda-who lives in Texas-and Paige, who lives up in Kalamazoo. Skyla is sixteen, bored, and always on her phone. She sends her siblings five or six texts a day, emoji-heavy missives from River Bend. Today, the text is a shaky video of a crummy old Buick pulling into the drive of the house next to the park. The owner of the Buick gets out and goes into his house, and then a white car-an unmarked police car-pulls through the alley and parks behind the house. Skyla can't believe her family is missing this. Some shit's going down at that creepy house, she texts, with a Wow emoji: the wide eyes, the mouth an O.
Two houses down, Ernest DeWitt is on the phone with his daughter, Beth. She's going through a rough patch, has been going through one for years. He worries for her, and for her children, Dan and Jeanette.
"Elizabeth," he says, over and over. He only uses her full name when he means business. "You can always come home."
Ernest hasn't even seen his grandkids since they were very small, but Dan's a teenager now, and Jeanette is in the eighth grade. They've been living in Charlotte, North Carolina. But now Beth's lost her job. As Beth tries to explain that she'll be fine, she's sure to find a job soon, his attention is lured away. Ernest watches Sheriff Hudson get out of a car parked next door, where he greets another officer waiting in an unmarked cruiser. What on earth is going on?
Over the phone, Beth simply thinks her father has lost interest in the conversation. If she had known the police car was there, if she had guessed the scene unfolding, she might have had time to ossify her heart before the story breaks. But she doesn't hear.
In the derelict house next to the park, Gilmer Thurber also fails to hear the car in the alley behind his house. But his sister hears. Encoded into her DNA, generations of women help her feel the vibrations, to suss out whether the driver is friend or foe. This is an unfamiliar engine: not a family member. The engine cuts off, and the silence that follows is terrifying. The best she can do is crouch down in her living room, ball herself, still her breath, diminish the space she occupies, and hope she will be overlooked. This tactic seldom works for her, but still she tries.
Her brother, Gilmer, goes about his business in the basement unbothered.
As soon as his officer is stationed near the front, Sheriff Hudson makes his way up the walk to the back door of the Thurber house. He has to knock three times, has to call out that he has a warrant for Gilmer's arrest, before Thurber's sister, as wan and frightened as a half-skinned rabbit, opens the door.
Elizabeth DeWitt
4
My babysitter, Mrs. Thurber, is old and mean. She makes me drink water standing by the kitchen table. She won't let me sit down. After I drink the water, she pushes me back outside to play. She won't let me in until lunch at eleven.
She has toys, but she won't let us play with them. She lives next door to the park, but she never takes us there. I play with the other kids in the yard. There's another girl whose name is also Beth. And there's a boy, Mikey. He has long hair and thick, dark eyebrows like a grown-up. I like him because even though he's white, he's nice to me. We make a game out of jumping over the dog doo in the grass. We run, jump, and don't land on the dog doo. Some of it's soft and some of it's hard if you poke it with a stick.
"You two are gross," the other Beth says. She tells Mikey, "You shouldn't let her make you gross."
I don't know what time it is, but I have to pee. I knock on the door and call to be let in. Then I whine. Then I cry. I can't hold it anymore, and when I let go where I stand, Mrs. Thurber yells at me, then sits me in the corner with my wet underwear on my head. She makes me wear a diaper for the rest of the day.
Her kids still live at home. They both look the same age as my mom and dad. The girl child, she's growing a baby in her belly, even though she's not married. You don't ask questions about it. I like to watch her chewing her breakfast. She chews on one side only, her jaw sticking out, popping. I try to chew crooked like her.
The man child lives in the basement. He walks around the house, the yard, wearing just a little swimsuit, and his belly moves like Jell-O.
After lunch, I hide in Mrs. Thurber's coat closet. It's hot in here, crowded with smelly coats. It's also dark, and I focus my eyes on the line of light coming in beneath the door. I stare at it a long time, until my eyes are dry. Cigarette smoke clouds the light. I'm sweating, watching smoke coming in beneath the door. The man child is home. He's smoking, looking for me, but he won't call for me. His mother is taking a nap. He won't risk waking her. All I can do is wait, pressed in between the coats, my feet hidden in adult-sized snow boots.
Wrapping Up
Linda drives until the Gulf Coastal Plain gives way to soft hills, golden in the evening sun. She drives until the hills go flat again, dipping into the hot brown parts of central Texas, then roll on into the foothills of Arkansas, rising and falling in the dark, promising mountains she never sees. Next comes corn, the stalks smoothed to an ocean under a bright moon, her eyes sailing along the surface of the fields. She has to check herself, remember to watch the road. Around morning, she enters the glacial hills of Illinois. By the time she arrives in Michigan, the sun has crested again.
Knee-high sweet corn grows here, tall for early June, the fields dense and glossy green. The sky is a hazy kind of blue, the air Michigan-muggy, which is hardly muggy at all. Her car strains-its knocking engine has been on the verge of dying for ages-and Linda shuts off the air conditioner, cranks her window down, and breathes in the fresh air, the smell of hay and manure. For a moment, she has a hard time remembering why she couldn't wait to get away from River Bend six years ago. There's the poverty, yes, and the shabby houses, and the fact that the place becomes a food desert when the farm stands close in the winter. Then there's the politics: the everyday goings-on of a small town, and the inability to keep private things private. And, of course, there's the fact that, at twenty-two, when Linda met Nathan, there had been nobody worth dating, worth marrying in River Bend. Nathan was better than the boys she grew up with, which made him seem perfect. He wore polished black dress shoes and collared shirts. He went to the gym. He used product in his hair. Some mornings, he took longer than she did to get ready. He was always so impeccable-that was the word that came to her mind-in his manner, in his speech. Best of all, he had ambitions, plans to move away from East Lansing, the college town where they met. He did, too, going off to law school, while Linda slunk back to River Bend to wait for him.
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