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The World Below

Random House Large Print Publishing

Chapter One

Imagine it: a dry, cool day, the high-piled cumulus clouds moving slowly fromnorthwest to southeast in the sky, their shadows following them across the hayfields yet to be cut for the last time this year. Down a narrow dirt roadbetween the fields, a horse-drawn carriage, two old people wearing their wornSunday clothes seated side by side in it, driving to town for their growndaughter's funeral. Neither of them spoke, though you could see, if you cared tolook, that the old woman's lips were moving ceaselessly, silently repeating thesame few phrases over and over. It was her intention, formed over the long weeksher daughter lay dying, to rescue her grandchildren from their situation, fromtheir motherless house. To take all three of them back to the farm with her. Shewas rehearsing what she'd say, though she wasn't aware of her mouth forming thewords, and her husband didn't notice.

Imagine this too: later in the afternoon of the same long day, the two oldergrandchildren, the girls, laughing together. Laughing cruelly at the old woman,their grandmother, for her misguided idea.

But perhaps it wasn't truly cruel. They were children, after all. As thoughtlessas children usually are. What's more, they'd spent a good part of this strangeday, the day of their mother's burial, laughing. Laughing nervously, perhapswith even a touch of hysteria, mostly because they didn't know what they oughtto feel or think. Laughter was the easiest course. It was their way to ward offall the dark feelings waiting for them.

They'd been up before dawn, long before their father and little brother wereawake, long before their grandparents started in to town, almost giddy with thenumber and variety of their chores. The meal after the church service was to beelaborate?deviled eggs, ham, scalloped potatoes, rolls, three kinds of jelliedsalad, pudding, and butter cookies?and they each had a list of things to doconnected with it. They worked in the kitchen in their nightgowns, barefoot, asthe soft gray light slowly filled the room. When the housekeeper, Mrs. Beston,arrived, she chased them upstairs to get dressed.

They had ironed their own dresses the day before because Mrs. Beston was sobusy. They hung now on hangers from the hook behind their bedroom door, smellingof starch, smelling just slightly still of the heat of the iron?that sweet,scorchy odor. As they pulled them on over their heads and then helped each otherplait their long braids, they were convulsed, again and again, by lurches oflaughter that felt as uncontrollable as sneezing. Sometimes it was wild, almostmean. It fed on itself. Just looking at each other, or at their sleepy littlebrother, Freddie, who'd come in in his nightshirt, his hair poking up strangely,to sit on their bed and watch them, could set it off.

Maybe this explained it then?why, later in the day, when their father told themof their grandmother's notion, they couldn't stop themselves: why they gave wayagain to the same ragged hysteria. They laughed at her. They laughed at her andtheir grandfather's having clopped into town with horse and buggy; their fatherhad had a motorcar forever, it seemed to them (it had been seven years). Theylaughed because she had only eight teeth left in her head and therefore smiledwith her hand lifted to cover her mouth?they could both imitate this awkward,apologetic gesture perfectly. They laughed because she wore a ridiculous strawhat shaped like a soggy pancake, and an old-fashioned dress, the sameold-fashioned dress she wore to all ceremonial events. They laughed because shehad thought their father would so easily give them away.

"They are still children," is what the old woman said to herson-in-law. "They need a childhood." The two of them had gone togetherinto the parlor after they greeted each other, and when she told him it wasprivate, what she had to say to him, he shut the sliding pocket doors. It hadbeen such a long time since anyone had pulled them out that a thick gray stripeof dust evenly furred all their decorative molding.

They sat not really looking at each other, the new widower and the dead woman'smother, and the grandmother forced herself to keep talking, to try to explainher plan to him. She wasn't a good talker, even in the easiest circumstances,and none of this was easy, of course. She hadn't imagined very much beyond herfirst statement ahead of time either. It was really her entire argument.

What's more, her son-in-law had always made her shy. He was a large, almosthandsome man with slicked-down hair, getting burly now as he approachedforty-five. He was a salesman, of vulcanized rubber goods, and his way ofdealing with the world came directly from that life: he wanted to amuse you, tocharm you. When he was courting her daughter?Fanny, her name was?he hadflirted with the grandmother, and this had made her tongue-tied and silentaround him. Once, after she'd served him a blueberry cake he found especiallydelicious, he'd grabbed her and waltzed her around the scrubbed wooden floors ofher farmhouse kitchen. This had so unnerved her?his energy and strength, andher helplessness against them?that she'd burst into shameful tears.

That's what she felt like doing now, weeping, she was making such a mess ofgetting this said. It had seemed so clear to her as she moved through hersolitary days while her daughter was dying and then since. The children neededher. They couldn't be left alone through the week any longer. The girls couldn'tbe asked to be so responsible?taking care of themselves and then their littlebrother too. It was too much. It was simply too much. They needed a home:someone to take care of them. She would offer to bring them to town on Fridaysto be with him for the weekend. Or he could come out and stay with them on thefarm. Oh, they'd be happy to have him!

All this planning had kept the image of her daughter?wasted, curled on herside, rising to consciousness only to cry out in pain?from her mind; thoughshe'd spoken to Fanny often, another version of Fanny, as she'd made herpreparations: as she'd shaken out the extra bedding, as she'd set out the framedpictures of her in the unused rooms she'd made up for the children. "Oh mydear girl," she had whispered. "They will be fine, you'll see. Theyjust need someone to tend to them for a change, that's all, and I am the one todo it."

Her son-in-law waited a moment now, out of kindness and sorrow, before heanswered. Then he cleared his throat and said that he saw things somewhatdifferently. His older daughter was almost sixteen, the younger thirteen?notreally children at all. They were big, good girls. He needed their help, hesaid.

Of course, this was exactly her point. She didn't press it, though. She satsilently and nodded, just once, furious at herself. She was giving up. Thiseasily.

And they were, he continued gently (very gently: he was fond of hismother-in-law, this cadaverously skinny and stern old woman), his children,after all.

She stood up and turned away from him, but not before he saw her mouth pulldown, grim and defeated.

It had taken Fanny several years to die, of cancer, though no one had everspoken the word in the house or in front of the children. And the truth was, asthe grandmother would have admitted if she weren't wild with a grief that turnedin like self-blame, that Fanny had been so unusual a young and then a nearlymiddle-aged woman that the girls had been in charge of the household long beforeanyone had guessed she was ill. So much for needing a childhood.

The girls were...