Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jane Smiley was born in Los Angeles, grew up in St. Louis, and studied at Vassar and the University of Iowa, where she received her Ph.D. She is
the author of eight other works of fiction. She lives in central California.

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At Paradise Gate

Touchstone

from Part One

Like their father, Anna Robison's three daughters loved to remember. They were around most of each day now that Ike was sick, and sometimes Anna thought of them as sort of a committee, hammering out an agreed upon version of their common history. Except that they rarely agreed. Their stories varied widely in the most basic details, and none of the three could be convinced of anything. As Anna put down the butter dish and surveyed the table (ivory plates, mats she'd crocheted herself, ice-filled water glasses), the discussion jangled around her.

"It wasn't that way at all," caroled Helen, the eldest, the blondest, the one who had inherited Ike's stature and commanding manner, bringing salad from the kitchen. I met him at a USO dance, and two weeks later he introduced Claire and Geo. I remember it distinctly!" Cutting across contradiction, she continued, "Are we ready, Mother? It's a shame that Christine..."

Christine, Helen's daughter, was due to arrive from Chicago at any minute.

Claire, the second child and Helen's lifelong challenger, seemed by contrast normally brownhaired, conventionally hazel-eyed. She pulled out her chair with an air of immovable conviction.

"He married Vida Deacon. Don't you remember her, Claire?" Helen sat down in her own place, on the other side of the table.

"I knew Geo for three weeks before that USO dance, Helen. I met him through Dennis Somebody, that fellow whose plane got shot down the last day of the war."

"Claire! You're wrong!" Helen lifted her hands and pitched her voice high in the I-won't-say-another-word range. That Geo had been Claire's husband for twenty-five years, which somehow certified her version of the meeting, was not alluded to. To Susanna, the youngest, Anna passed scalloped potatoes. Susanna, who was a little overweight, received them reverently, then said, "Remember Daddy used to say that that guy had the biggest feet and the smallest chin in six counties?"

"Bobby had a perfectly normal chin," said Helen. "You're thinking of Bob Lowe, who had those freckles too. Even on his eyelids." These Anna could recall. In the folds of his ears as well. Bob Lowe was the most freckled person Anna ever knew. Ike had turned so many of the incidents in Anna's life into tales that usually she tried to avoid recollection, but fragments, like the fall of light or the shape of someone's cheek, often occurred to her, as Bob Lowe, freckled into the very eaves of his ears, did now.

"Is that Daddy?" said Claire.

The women at the table hushed, their forks suspended in air and their eyebrows lifted, but no call came again.

"Mother, you really..."

Anna stared doggedly at her plate. Claire and Susanna were at her about this ten times a day -- wouldn't she please move Ike into the living room or the dining room. But Anna would not, and dared not mention the idea to Ike. Such an illness, an illness that meant displacement of furniture and attention to the minutiae of her daily routine, was sure to be a final illness. Silence fell around the table again, not a listening silence, but a worried one.

"Do you know that story about Uncle Abel and the bull, Mother? Christine spoke of it over the phone the other night, and I didn't recall it all exactly." Of all her daughters, Anna thought Helen had the only interesting voice, musical but with a hollow quality that made it both strong and fragile. Although her clear, effortless tones were always cheering and alluring, they were never convincing. She sat in an upright, perching posture, and her eyes or hands often strayed after the cigarettes she had given up five years before. Anna wondered if she realized this habit.

"I do," said Susanna. "Daddy told me himself. You were living on the ranch, weren't you, Mother?"

Anna nodded. And the lupines were in bloom. They spread in a great azure triangle behind the house, stiff, coneshaped, vibrating against the green of the back paddock.

Susanna went on. "Uncle Abel was castrating a bull that he'd tied to the fence post."

"I can't believe he just tied the animal to a fence post, Susanna," said Claire.

A quick snip, Abel always said. He was a huge and terribly impatient man who wouldn't have the vet, or even the neighbors, on the ranch to help. Anna nodded.

"It's true," declared Susanna. "That's how it started to get loose. It was tossing its head and the loop in the rope fell out, and Uncle Abel looked up and saw the bull with its head turned, peering at him."

Anna had sometimes wondered if Abel had been afraid or merely angry. He had such a large head and gruff manner that she could never imagine him afraid, only transported into a higher degree of fury.

"Then it started to bellow."

"Yes," said Anna. Desperate bellowing that the Big Horns to the west threw back at them.

"Daddy was coming out the door. He saw what was happening, grabbed the ax from the chopping block, and flung it across the backyard, and struck the bull exactly between the ears. Dropped it in its tracks."

"Hatchet," said Anna. "It was the hatchet."

"Daddy said ax. Anyway, then he said, 'First and ten.'"

"He did say something funny. I can't remember what it was."

Anna had followed him out of the house, Helen in her arms. June colors in the mountains, especially vivid in the silence that followed the death of the bull. The animal lay in a black heap, on the ground, his bide still glistening with health, and Abel stood behind, the shears dangling from one hand, his mouth agape, red blood across the indigo front of his new overalls. And blood covered the bead of the bull like a bandanna trailing in the dust. Helen had said her newest word, "Bye? Bye-bye?"

"What's that?"

This time they all heard it -- "Mother! Mother!" in a thin, demanding voice. "I'll go, " said Claire. She scraped her chair back and threw her napkin on the table. Ike would not be glad to see her, Anna knew. He preferred to keep his illness private between husband and wife. Her calves hurt so, though, and her heels too, that she welcomed a few moments of preparation. If Ike really wanted something, he would want it from her alone. Anna and the others ate without speaking until Claire returned. Sure enough. "He wouldn't tell me," she reported. "He just said, 'Where's Mother?'"

"He generally does." Anna could not suppress a small scowl. In spite of Helen, Claire, and Susanna, she felt tired to death by dinner every evening. The staircase creaked under her weight, and she pulled herself up the last two or three steps with the bannister. He was already calling out, "Mother? Mother?"

"Yes Ike?" It was only since the onset of these latest problems that she'd begun to feel comfortable with his given name again. For most of their married lives they'd addressed each other as the children did. Sometimes, recently, he too called her Anna. Maybe it was a bad sign. He'd put on a shirt, and was now propped against the wall at the head of the bed, fingering Winesburg, Ohio. He loved Winesburg, Ohio. He looked at her without speaking, waiting for her to ask him if he needed to go to the bathroom. She did not want to ask, but did anyway. He nodded. It annoyed her that after all these years he couldn't bring himself to speak of going to the bathroom. In the hospital, the nurses had had a terrible time with him, and finally had to give in. He would use a bedpan only when Anna was there to help him. She didn't see how he could tolerate the discomfort, but it was something she could not ask about. He threw off the covers...