Women and Other Animals Part 14

"You girls follow every fad, don't you? I've been eating beef and cream every day of my life."

"Don't you worry that one day your arteries will just explode?" asked Elizabeth.

Charlotte swallowed a last mouthful of gritty potatoes. "I got better things to worry about than my arteries, child."

"The physical therapist did say you should consider losing weight," said Andrea.

"Everybody wants to look like starved Jews these days. I butchered that veal calf. A hundred thirtyfour pounds. Got $1.30 a pound. Neither of you weighs that much, do you?"

Andrea spoke up. "We haven't eaten Thanksgiving dinner here for seventeen years. I was just counting."

"It's not Thanksgiving," said Elizabeth. "I spent Thanksgiving with Nathan and his parents and sister, a normal family."

"But this is like a Thanksgiving dinner," said Andrea.

"This is like a nightmare," said Elizabeth.

"This is like a visit from the Holocaust victims," said Charlotte. "Maybe your stomachs are so shrunken that you couldn't eat even if you wanted to. After they freed the people from the camps, a lot of them couldn't eat, you know, so they starved anyway."

"Oh, this is cheerful dinner conversation," said Elizabeth. "Let's talk about concentration camps."

Charlotte sc.r.a.ped her plate with the side of her fork, and pushed it aside. Even without her leg, she had more meat on her than the girls combined. "It's part of our history, the Holocaust. No sense pretending it didn't happen."

"We should do this every year," said Andrea, forcing a smile. "The three of us. Meet on the Sat.u.r.day after Thanksgiving. And we'll try to teach you to cook with less fat."

The same way she had eaten every bit of food on her plate, Page 192 Charlotte wanted to say everything that came into her head. And she had the right. These girls had screamed in their cribs, and she had picked them up and nursed them with her own breast milk.

"Worrying about fat is for city people," said Charlotte. "Country people can eat anything they want because they work hard."

"You already killed Dad with this stuff."

"G.o.d, Liz, don't say that," said Andrea. "Mom, thank you for cooking for us. Everything is delicious, especially the stuffing."

"That's because it's made with lots of pork sausage," said Charlotte.

Elizabeth clanked her fork on her plate and stood. "This is ridiculous, Mother." She walked over to the window and opened the curtains. The girl probably didn't even remember that oak trees with trunks six feet thick had stood on that property, some of them seventy feet high, more than a hundred years old. The developers had cut down nearly every one. Charlotte hadn't been able to escape the noise of the chain saws anywhere on her property.

"It's like you're trying to poison us," said Elizabeth.

"She's not trying to poison us, Liz. This is how she eats."

"I wish I were back in Chicago. Everything makes sense there. You know, people there actually respect me." Elizabeth's features suddenly looked fragile.

"Liz, we respect you," said Andrea.

"Maybe you do, but she doesn't."

"Of course she does."

Liz returned to the table and sat decisively. "Mother, do you know what law school is like? You should be so G.o.dd.a.m.ned proud of me for graduating at the top of my cla.s.s. But you don't know anything about law school. You have no idea about anything but beef prices and alfalfa and fat."

Charlotte had intended to tell the girl she was proud of her, somehow, but she couldn't do it now. "I know you never came home at all, not even during the summer.

You never helped me can tomatoes or put up hay."

"I had to work during the summer, Mother, to earn money to go to school. Daddy would have helped me."

"You wanted to sell my house!"

Page 193 "Stop it, you two!" shouted Andrea. "I can't take this." Her hands went up as if to cover her eyes or her ears but stopped stiff in midair.

"I'm getting the dessert," said Charlotte. She walked slowly, dishes in both hands, to show that she was doing just fine with the artificial leg. In reality, it pinched with each step, and there was another pain, waxing and waning, connected to a leg that lay a mile and a half away in a nondenominational cemetery in River Oaks Township.

Elizabeth spoke quietly to Andrea, but Charlotte could hear. "Let's just mix pure cream with sugar and b.u.t.ter, and eat it by the spoonful until we're fat monsters. h.e.l.l, let's just smear it all over our bodies." Charlotte stacked the dishes on the counter as quietly as she could so she could overhear them. These daughters were her flesh, just as surely as that leg had been her flesh, as surely as that land in the subdivision had been her land.

Elizabeth asked Andrea, "Does she have coffee in there?"

"Oh, definitely. She drinks a whole pot every morning." They joined Charlotte in the kitchen as she was slicing a pie into six pieces.

"You made an apple pie!" said Andrea, who in many ways had been an agreeable child.

"Lard crust?" asked Elizabeth. "Or suet?"

"You can't make a pie crust without fat."

"Do you remember when you used to make ice cream?" asked Andrea.

"Look in the chest freezer." Something had come over Charlotte when she was in the township center yesterday, and she had decided to make ice cream, actually bought a twentypound bag of ice at the Harding's grocery-paying for frozen water, that was really the limit, all right. She had turned the handle on the icecream maker for hours last night.

Andrea carried the silver twoquart tin from the utility room into the kitchen. "Liz, can you believe she made ice cream? Jerseycow ice cream."

"G.o.d, I haven't thought about Mom's ice cream in years," said Elizabeth. "But none for me, please." She was trying to fit together the pieces of the stovetop percolator from the dish drainer.

Page 194 "Let me make that." Charlotte took the pieces from Elizabeth's hands, which were not pretty like Andrea's, but shaped like her own, large with crooked fingers.

"Look, Liz," said Andrea. "I'm just putting a tiny bit on your plate."

The ice cream melted onto the pieces of pie and when the coffee was done, Andrea brought it out in cups with saucers. Charlotte poured an inch of ivory cream into her cup Andrea poured a few drops into hers.

"Since when do you take cream?" asked Elizabeth.

"I'm just trying it this way."

Elizabeth shook her head. In near silence she ate the ice cream and pie filling, but left the empty sh.e.l.l on her plate. Andrea finished everything except a ridge of pinched crust.

"I guess I should start dishes," Andrea said.

"I'll do them later." Charlotte looked out through the curtains that Elizabeth had left open and saw a sliver of a moon, thin as a fingernail clipping, the kind of moon that would not rise too high. "Right now I want your help with something else." Charlotte had been waiting all night to start this conversation. "Tonight I want us to bring home my leg.''

"What!" shouted Elizabeth. "We are done with this leg thing, Mom. Case closed. It was hard enough to get it where it is."

"Mom, you're not serious," said Andrea.

"I want my leg. I want to bury it on the hill in the pasture."

"This is crazy talk," said Andrea.

"I need a drink," said Elizabeth. A lock of hair fell from the clip which held the rest of it above her neck.

"Bringing it here is out of the question, Mom," said Andrea. "Anyway, it's not really your leg. It's just rotted flesh and bone."

"Andrea, is there any whiskey here?" Elizabeth's eyes searched the edges of the room. The proud look had fallen from her face. She looked like the girl who had lost her daddy.

Andrea shrugged.

"h.e.l.l, you think I don't got whiskey, child?" said Charlotte. "I got whiskey." She pushed her chair back and hurried into the kitchen, Page 195 not bothering to conceal her limp, then returned with a full bottle and one water gla.s.s which she set in front of Elizabeth. The label was so worn that the words "Old Crow" were barely visible. It had been in her cupboard since Mr. DeBoer died. Elizabeth poured half a gla.s.s, and Charlotte and Andrea watched her gulp most of it clown without a breath.

"h.e.l.l, I didn't know you drank like that," said Charlotte. "That's how Mr. DeBoer drank. They say a Dutchman doesn't drink, but Mr. DeBoer drank, all right."

"It's no wonder he drank if he lived with you," said Elizabeth, leaning back in her chair. The words stung, but Charlotte savored the attack.

"I've already dug a hole five feet deep," said Charlotte. "I want to put the leg there before one of the cows falls in." She'd been digging for weeks, sloping one side of the hole so she could drag herself in and out.

"I didn't go to law school so I could rob graves," said Elizabeth.

"The leg is all infected," said Andrea.

"It's sealed in a d.a.m.n box. Pour yourself another drink, Elizabeth," said Charlotte. For the first time in her life, Charlotte wished she were a drinker herself. "Did I ever tell you that I named you after my mother?"

"Yes, but I'm starting to wonder if you really had a mother." Elizabeth drained the rest of her whiskey and banged the gla.s.s on the table. "I think maybe you grew out of the ground like a G.o.dd.a.m.n tree."

"Let's take that yellow car to my grave, child." Her mother had been just as opinionated, just as direct, but would this Elizabeth risk her life to tell the truth the way her mother had? And would this Elizabeth have sent her only child across the ocean to live with strangers in order to save her?

Andrea looked lost, her eyes moving between Charlotte and Elizabeth.

Elizabeth asked, "What happened to your mother, anyway?"

"She died in the war, with my father."

"I know that, but how did she die?" Elizabeth shouted. "Tell us!"

Page 196 "Stop it, Liz!" said Andrea.

"The way a lot of people died." Charlotte looked hard at Elizabeth. "Hungry."

Elizabeth looked back at her just as hard.

Nowadays there was little shame in admitting her mother was a communist. That wasn't the problem. And the girl had a right to know about her grandmother. So why, when Charlotte wanted nothing more than to tell them the truth, was her throat closing?

The sign at the graveyard read "No visitors after 9 P. M." Elizabeth shut off the headlights and drove in the dark along the paved path. The three got shovels out of the trunk and searched the headstones until they found the single marker, "Charlotte Elizabeth DeBoer, 1932." Mr. DeBoer had been buried near his own family in the graveyard behind the church. Mats of sod had been laid over the soil here but hadn't thoroughly rooted so Charlotte was able to roll them aside with her shovel.

Beneath, the dirt was loosely packed and moved easily. Both girls wore white tennis shoes. Charlotte's work shoes were hardsoled. The night was warm for the end of November-their breath was barely visible-but Charlotte had worn coa.r.s.e leather work gloves.

Elizabeth carried the whiskey bottle in her bare, crooked fingers. "Some families go to the park and have picnics in the sunshine," she said. "But we go out at night and dig up graves."

"I should have my head examined for even coming out here," said Andrea.

"But don't go to Mom's doctor," said Elizabeth, laughing now. "He'll cut it off."

"Very funny," said Andrea.

Charlotte thought the two might have been digging with spoons, such was the tiny amount of dirt they moved at first. Charlotte's power was not what it used to be since she had to balance on the fake leg as she drove the shovel into the earth with her good one. Andrea, more quickly than Elizabeth, seemed to figure out the angle at which she could best force the blade into the ground. Though her daughters were skinny, they were three and four inches taller than she was, and she had not been considered a short woman in her time.

Page 197 "How did you get to be such a hard person, Mom?" asked Elizabeth.

"Liz! Leave her alone!" said Andrea.

"Me leave her alone? She's got us out here digging up a grave and I should leave her alone?"

Charlotte didn't respond, but absorbed their voices. She liked Elizabeth drunk and loosetongued. Charlotte hoped that with their careers, the girls would accomplish more than she had. If they married, she hoped they'd marry men they liked and that they'd keep their bodies intact, every limb, every digit. If only she could meld into words the clouds of poison ashes which settled around her each day, then they would understand why she had to bring the leg home. And then she would find a way to tell them everything, about her parents, about Mr. DeBoer, about her terrible dreams. Her eyes watered so she redoubled her efforts, pushing the shovel with more force. As the pile of dirt beside them grew, Charlotte felt her strength infusing her daughters she felt their small muscles tighten. And as they dug, she felt a shimmer of her own mother's presence.

"My mother died in a camp," said Charlotte, crashing the shovel into the dirt, but not stopping her work. "Along with my father."

The girls worked without speaking for what seemed like a long time. Finally Elizabeth said, "We knew that, More. Grandpa Peter told us a few years ago." Elizabeth looked at Andrea, then back to Charlotte. "I just wanted to make you say it back there. I don't know why."

Charlotte kept her head down and did not ask why they had talked to Peter about it instead of her. She didn't ask them if they knew more than she did.

"What was she like?" asked Elizabeth, "Your mother. Grandpa Peter said she was a communist."

"Maybe she doesn't want to talk about it," said Andrea.

"She was a journalist." Charlotte's voice sounded unnaturally loud in the graveyard. She felt as though this simple fact was the first thing she had ever told her daughters. Maybe this was the beginning of telling them everything. But right now they had to keep digging. This was their chance-if they worked hard enough, Page 198 the three of them would unearth not only her own leg, but her mother's bones as well. By the light of this thin moon, Charlotte's parents would finally awaken from their unholy and emaciated sleep, and they would forgive her for leaving them and for surviving. Charlotte balanced on her artificial foot, and with the real foot pushed her shovel deep into the ground again. She imagined a system of roots growing beneath her, stretching into the dirt, wrapping around lost old bones, reaching toward her daughters' feet.

Elizabeth stopped to rest and leaned on her shovel like the country girl she'd never be. She was gazing up at the sky as though she hadn't seen stars or the moon in a while. After she took a swig from her bottle, she handed it to Andrea who reluctantly sipped and then, instead of giving it back to Liz, held it toward Charlotte. Both daughters watched as she tipped the bottle up and let the whiskey burn her lips.

end.