Cal,” said Piper. “I just didn’t do it in my daddy’s earshot.”
“Well, it’s up to you, of course.”
“Yes, I suppose it is.”
Later that night, Piper went down to Leo’s house, a small honey-colored place he’d built half a mile down from the main house. She knocked on the door and walked in to find her sister-in-law wiping flour from her hands.
“Hi there, Elisa,” she said. “Is Leo home?”
“Sure is, he’s upstairs having a bath. You wanna wait?”
Piper nodded. “I think I’ll have to.”
The women sat in the kitchen and chatted while Elisa put the finishing touches to her pie. Then quietly Elisa said, “My sister is pregnant again.”
“Oh, how wonderful,” said Piper before she had time to stop herself. Elisa smiled down at her fingers as she licked cherry juice from them.
“Yes, it is. I’m very happy for her. I do love playing with my niece and nephews. She was a little afraid of telling me, I think, on account of the troubles Leo and I have been having, but I’m glad she told me. She must feel so full of purpose.”
Piper kept silent but she watched the back of the woman’s head keenly. Usually she would reach out and touch her, but she could not afford to do so at a moment like this, not with what she had to tell her brother; not with knowing that she had approximately thirty seconds to say what she needed to before she was sent packing out of the house.
When Leo came downstairs, he nodded at his sister in greeting.
“I told Piper about my sister’s baby,” said Elisa as she dusted the pie in sugar. Leo gazed at his wife and then as if conscious of his sister watching, coughed into his hand and turned away.
“So you stopping for supper?” he asked.
“No, not exactly.” Piper placed a hand on her stomach, willing the courage to come, but it would not. So instead she leapt forward anyway, hoping that its inability to show itself was merely a product of delay rather than a sign of total absence.
“I think we should send for Cal.”
From the corner of her eye she saw Elisa’s hand hover in midair and then gently resume shaking the sugar over the crust. Her hand beating against the sieve was the only sound in the room.
Finally Leo said, “Now what in hell gave you that idea?”
“Pa is dying. You should respect a dying man’s wish.”
The chair scraped on the floor as Leo seated himself level with his sister.
“You ever think that maybe you should respect the wishes of a man when he was sane and well, rather than hallucinating and sick? That in his right mind Pa would never ask for such a thing?”
“It’s not just for Pa. Cal has a right to know.”
“For what?” Leo snorted. “He didn’t want to know for how many years now? Did he want to know after Ma died?”
“I think Daddy is ready to forgive.”
“I think this is horseshit.”
Piper stood up from the table and spread her fingers in a fan against the edge. She made herself tower over her brother.
“I believe we are better than this. I believe we are better than some people who would just let their own interests get in the way of doing what is right and I believe that even if Cal came back it wouldn’t make no difference to anything other than Pa would finally stop asking for him and could get some peace before he dies.”
Leo’s jaw worked thoughtfully at this last part. Piper saw it and pressed her advantage.
“You have to trust that Pa would have recognized what you’ve done, Leo. You’ve been here, Cal hasn’t. Maybe things were meant to work out differently to that, but they didn’t. We won’t lose anything by having him back. Once upon a time this is what you would have wanted.”
Elisa’s hands provided the background noise to the pause that followed Piper’s words: the opening and closing of the oven door, the scrape of dishes in the sink. Piper willed her brother to show a glimpse of the boy she had known since childhood. She willed it so hard it was almost a prayer, and for a moment as he lifted her head she thought perhaps God had been listening.
“Whatever,” said Leo and he left the room.
She knew better than to look at her sister-in-law for comfort when it came to this subject so she left and made her way back home. Three days later as Leo came in for lunch, she slipped a piece of paper and some money next to the arm holding his corn beef sandwich.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“I need you to send a telegram for me.”
“To who?”
“To Cal.”
Leo slapped his tongue against his teeth.
“Will you?”
“I wasn’t planning on going into town.”
“Neither was I.”
They stood there in their silent contest of wills, and as Piper felt herself falter, a shadow passed over her brother’s face and he dropped his sandwich onto the plate. He hunched over as he stood up to leave and she made as if to touch him, but he gave her a look that forced her hand back to her side.
And then her father called for her. She was up the stairs in an instant and when she came back down, she saw the plate was now in the sink and that the money with the piece of paper was gone and she held on to the banister to steady herself as she leaned against the wall.
Did Walter have an inkling of what his simple request had done to the equilibrium of his household? Did he even care? It was a question she longed to ask, but she held her counsel. Instead she thought back to the last time they had all been under the one roof. It was the day of her mother’s wake and she had been thirteen years old. She remembered how she had stared up at the blueness of the sky and at the good china laden with finger sandwiches and cakes from their neighbors and the house full of people, and she remembered thinking that on any other day, to any stranger passing by, how much it would have looked like a party.
She remembered her father sitting in his chair, when he was still strong and intimidating, surrounded by their neighbors and Leo, only two years older than she was, hovering in the doorway looking silently at the shadows Cal threw up on the walk as he stalked up the drive away from them.
She remembered all these things with color, and between the stairwell and the walls she gave up a shudder.
Whenever my grandparents talked about their courtship, they always gave the impression of a passion and romance that could not help but transgress all boundaries. In one sense they were being truthful, but in another how else could they have presented it? Because the simple truth, as Piper loved to point out and did so more frequently the older she became, was that while theirs was a respectable marriage, their courtship had been far from it, with the inconvenient fact that my grandmother was already married.
I have often been struck by the differences in the ways in which Piper and Lavinia laid out the early years of my grandparents’ relationship, and indeed both their versions fascinated me because despite their differences they both illuminated an aspect of their partnership that neither myself, nor my siblings, nor even their own children, had ever witnessed: a time when it was my grandfather, not Lavinia, who had the power.
When my grandmother was still known as Anne-Marie Parks, she and Cal had begun their affair. At first, certainly from my grandfather’s point of view, it was never meant to be serious. He had no intention of staying in Iowa—this was simply a way of passing the time until his father died and he could be free. And he liked Anne-Marie: he liked how she always twisted her hair in her hands on one side of her neck as she listened